Toys ‚R‘ Us Is Shuttering Stores, and Few Will Want to Fill Them

The debt-laden toy chain, with more than 700 stores across the U.S., became one of the largest victims of the retail decline when it announced on Thursday that it would go out of business after a failed rescue effort. The liquidation could dump millions of square feet of real estate onto a market that‘s already bloated with vacancies from retailer bankruptcies and store closures, a trend that‘s been escalating as shoppers increasingly turn to the internet.

„It‘s really tough right now to find a solution for something that‘s that big and with that many locations,“ Jan Kniffen, a retail consultant and founder of J. Rogers Kniffen Worldwide Enterprises, said in an interview. „How many people need more stores right now? How many people need more square footage? Not very many.“