Naples & Fort Myers Kirkland’s Closing: Deals Await | Retail

Kirkland’s home decor stores in Naples and Fort Myers are having going-out-of-business sales ahead of permanently closing within the next 10 weeks.

The south Fort Myers store in Gulf Coast Town Center is set to shutter near the end of December, while the Naples store in Park Shore Plaza is targeted to close Jan. 26. Bright yellow signs inside and outside the stores announce that “Everything Must Go!” and “All Sales Final!” as furniture, lamps, mirrors, wall art, holiday decorations and all other items are discounted as much as 30%.

“We were surprised we were even closing to begin with, to be honest, because we do fairly well,” said Janet Fisher, general manager of Kirkland’s at Gulf Coast Town Center.

While Fisher wasn’t provided an exact day, she was told that her store tentatively would close at the end of December. Merchandise, though, continues to arrive at the store, she said.

“They are sending out trucks every week. We are getting trucks every Monday up through the first week in December,” she said.

According to a company news release in mid-September, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. acquired Kirkland’s Home brand assets and trade name for $10 million and will expand the retailer into the wholesale market. While most of Kirkland’s Home stores will be converted into Bed Bath & Beyond Home locations over the next two years, the company plans to close 25 Kirkland’s locations, including its stores in Collier and Lee counties.

Fisher is holding out hope that Southwest Florida will land a new Bed Bath & Beyond Home store.

“I’m hoping, if it was leasing issues, that maybe they’re find us a new spot or a different spot,” she said. “I’m not really sure because they didn’t say a whole lot about it, to be honest. I personally am like, OK, let’s hope for the best.”

This will be the fourth and last time Kirkland’s has closed in Naples. It will be the second time the national retailer has closed the same 7,861-square-foot unit in Park Shore Plaza on U.S. 41 North. After closing its store, removing its sign and completely clearing out its Park Shore Plaza space during the early days of the pandemic in 2020, Kirkland’s reopened there in 2022.

Kirkland’s first store in Naples was in Coastland Center mall, where it launched in the late 1990s and operated for 10 years. Then, the Nashville-based chain moved across the street to a company-owned store that it operated for about six years in Gateway Plaza next to Naples High School. After doing business in the city for at least 15 years, Kirkland’s permanently closed its Naples store in July 2012. Following a nearly five-year hiatus, Kirkland’s returned to Naples in 2017, taking a small part of the huge space Big Kmart vacated two years earlier in Park Shore Plaza.

Bed Bath & Beyond filed bankruptcy a couple of years ago and closed both of its large stores in North Naples. The store in the Gateway Shoppes at North Bay remains vacant, but the store in Ridgeport Plaza at Airport-Pulling and Pine Ridge roads is being split for a Sprouts grocery store and Golf Galaxy.

On Aug. 8, the reorganized Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. opened its first Bed Bath & Beyond Home store in Nashville.