Brick Bon-Ton Closing As Company Shutters Nationwide

BRICK, NJ — After initially surviving a round of closures announced earlier this year, Bon-Ton in Brick Plaza will be closing, as the department store closes all of its stores across the country.

The stores will close within the next 10-12 weeks after the company was acquired by a liquidation group in bankruptcy court late Tuesday.

Bon-Ton stores announced late Tuesday evening that a joint venture composed of the holders of the Company's 8.0 percent Second Lien Secured Note and Great American Group, LLC and Tiger Capital Group, LLC will acquire the inventory and certain other assets of the Company. The winning bid was $775.5 million.

The liquidation of the company's more than 200 stores is expected to take 10 to 12 weeks according to a Journal Sentinel report Wednesday.

Brick Plaza has been undergoing a number of changes in the last several months, as some stores, including Sports Authority, which closed in the summer of 2016.

Federal Realty Investment Trust, which owns Brick Plaza, has given the portion of the shopping center that faces Chambersbridge Road a makeover within the last year, and in December received approval from the Brick Township Planning Board for plans that will be a large-scale makeover of the back side of the plaza.

Included in those plans are designs that would remove the archway that currently exists at Bon-Ton, so the developer Metrovation can create a boardwalk-like area leading from the front of the plaza to the back and connect it with the restaurants along Cedar Bridge Road, said Chris Coles, who represented Federal Realty at the Planning Board meeting.

RELATED: LA Fitness, More Changes Coming To Brick Plaza

The closure of Bon-Ton would likely make that easier to accomplish, but it also means Federal Realty has another space to fill at the shopping center. LA Fitness is expected to fill the space previously occupied by Sports Authority, once some renovations are completed, but that work does not appear to have started.

It is unknown how many employees are facing layoffs at the Brick Bon-Ton; no WARN notice had been filed with the New Jersey Department of Labor as of Wednesday evening.

The only other Bon-Ton location in New Jersey was in Phillipsburg and that location was listed on the original closure list announced by the company in January.

Photo by Karen Wall, Patch staff