West Marine is closing its Port Washington store at 16 Soundview Market Place as part of a bankruptcy plan that will shutter 59 locations nationwide. The move puts one of the boating retailer's Long Island stores on the closure list as the company works through Chapter 11 protection.
The timing matters now because West Marine has started identifying which stores will disappear after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 17 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. Before the closures were announced, the company operated 200 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico, and it has said it is trimming its footprint to fit current business needs.
That reduction reaches beyond Port Washington. West Marine also plans to close two other New York locations, in Watertown and Irondequoit, while continuing to evaluate its portfolio with landlords. The company said the cuts are part of an ongoing restructuring, and the chain had about $549.2 million in total outstanding debt obligations when it sought bankruptcy protection.
The Port Washington store is only one piece of a wider shift, but it is the kind of local cut that makes the bankruptcy plan feel immediate on Long Island. West Marine said it had 2,600 employees in stores across the United States and in Puerto Rico as of its petition date, a reminder that the closures will be felt by workers as well as customers who have long relied on the chain for boating, fishing and water sports supplies.
What West Marine has not yet said is when the Port Washington store will actually close. The company said it could not comment on the exact timing of its planned closures, including that location, leaving the last step of the plan open even as the list of stores begins to narrow.
Chris Squeri said West Marine is pretty much the largest retailer of its kind in terms of the accessories and marine supplies it sells, but added that there are a lot of smaller mom and pop stores on Long Island. He said competition from online retailers has put extra pressure on companies like West Marine and that the company was slower in making the pivot to ecommerce, a problem that now sits behind the numbers in the bankruptcy filing.
West Marine was founded in 1968, and for years its size set it apart from the smaller shops that line the coast and the bay. Now the question is not whether the Port Washington store is on the list — it is — but how quickly the company will move from announcing closures to carrying them out.
