Sam’s Club Closing Two Locations In Connecticut

ORANGE, CT — Two Sam’s Club locations in Connecticut have been caught up in a wave of closings across the nation. Shoppers were surprised to find the Sam’s Club in Orange abruptly closed on Thursday morning. The Manchester location was also closed on Thursday.

A sign at the door of the Orange location states that the store will reopen on Friday morning, according to the New Haven Register. A message on the Manchester Sam's Club phone number said the store was closed Thursday but would re-open Friday.

The stores are slated to close permanently on Jan. 26, according to letters sent to the state Department of Labor and local officials, NBC Connecticut reports.

Manchester Planning officials said they were notified of the local closing and said Jan. 26 is the target date for the store in the Buckland Hills shopping district.

“After a thorough review of our existing portfolio, we’ve decided to close a series of clubs and better align our locations with our strategy,” Sam’s Club said in a post on Twitter on Thursday afternoon. “Closing clubs is never easy and we’re committed to working with impacted members and associates through this transition.”

The New Haven Register reports more than 300 people will lose their jobs between both stores. Newington remains the only Connecticut location listed on the Sam's Club website. State officials haven’t been notified of any plans to close the Newington location, according to the Register.

Sam's Club is an offshoot of Walmart that requires yearly membership and is known for selling items in bulk, offering many items at discount.

Walmart is closing 63 Sam’s Clubs stores nationwide, the Business Insider reports. The abrupt closings also came on the same day that Walmart announced plans to raise starting hourly wages to $11, expand employee benefits, and offer workers bonuses of up to $1,000, according to Business Insider.

A number of major retailers from various industries have already announced plans to close stores in the U.S. in 2018. The latest round of store closures follow a year where many brick and mortar shops threw in the towel in 2017.

Patch has compiled a list of Connecticut retailers that have announced plans to close locations in 2018 below:

Gap

In September, Gap announced it would be closing approximately 200 "underperforming" Gap and Banana Republic stores in the near future.

J. Crew

The speciality retailer plans to close 39 stores by the end of January 2018, CNN Money reported. That amounts to about 6 percent of its total stores and is double the number of stores it previously planned on closing.

Teavana

Starbucks announced in July that it will close its close to 400 Teavana stores by next year. Starbucks said the majority of the Teavana stores will close by Spring 2018.

Walgreens

Walgreens will close about 600 drugstores as it buys 1,932 stores from its competitor Rite Aid, the Associated Press reported. A company spokesman told the AP that the majority of closures will be Rite Aid and a vast majority of stores closing will be within a mile of another store in the Walgreens network. Walgreens did not say which locations would be closed but the closures will start in the spring.

Read more on the Sam's Club closing at the New Haven Register here.

With reporting by Chris Dehnel, Patch Staff

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