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COLONIE
Borders to close store on Wolf Road
BY JAMES SCHLETT Gazette Reporter

    It could have come out of a storybook: two giants battling across a busy street. And the story is entering its final chapter this summer, with the Borders Group retreating from the Wolf Road corridor, leaving Barnes & Noble to dominate the area it first settled in 1993.
    The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Borders will close its Wolf Road bookstore, a 31,000-square-foot, two-story building near Colonie Center, on Sept. 6.
    The closing will come 10 months after B&N relocated across the street to a newly constructed 33,000-square-foot space at Colonie Center — putting it even closer to Borders.
    Borders spokeswoman Kolleen O’Meara said the 15-year-old bookstore is closing because it is underperforming. She could not say whether competition from the closer and larger B&N affected sales, but she said its performance likely declined “over time.”
    “Nothing happens over night,” O’Meara said.
    The Borders opened on Wolf Road months after the B&N debuted on Colonie’s commercial strip. In 1993, Colonie became the fourth U.S. community to house neighboring B&N and Borders stores, joining suburbs of Philadelphia and Chicago.
    The closing threatens to leave the western end of Wolf Road with two vacant big-box stores, including the 30,000-squarefoot building B&N abandoned last November.
    Borders plans to maintain its other Capital Region stores in Saratoga Springs, Clifton Park and Guilderland. Borders’ 36,700-square-foot location at Crossgates Mall, which opened two years ago, is its newest in the area.
    Borders, the nation’s secondlargest bookseller chain, teetered on the brink of bankruptcy earlier this year and considered putting itself up for sale. Industry leader B&N in New York was viewed as a likely buyer for the troubled chain, whose fi nancial situation is improving.
    The Michigan bookseller has 547 superstores worldwide operating as Borders and 476 mallbased stores that operate as Waldenbooks, Borders Express and Borders Outlet. It has a Borders Express at the Rotterdam Square mall and a Waldenbooks at Wilton Mall.
    Borders’ U.S. superstores ended the fiscal first quarter May 3 with a 4.1 percent decline in sales. That drop was only 1.7 percent when excluding the music category. The company posted a first quarter net loss of $31.7 million, compared to $35.9 million a year earlier.
    Although the bookseller plans to close two other Borders in Illinois and California, it plans to open 14 stores this year. Since February, Borders has been opening new concept stores with digital and Internet options.

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COLONIE
Mall will have FAO Schwarz store inside Macy’s
BY JAMES SCHLETT Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter James Schlett at 395-3040 or jschlett@dailygazette.net.

    A recently completed $100 million renovation has already made the Colonie Center bigger, but in September the mall will get “Big” — Tom Hanks-style — as Macy’s opens an in-store FAO Schwarz toy store.
    The Colonie Center’s Macy’s has been selected for one of the 275 FAO-operated, in-store toy stores slated to open this fall, according to a spokeswoman for the Cincinnati department store chain.
    Wanting to tap into the toy market with a powerful private label collection, Macy’s last month entered into an exclusive agreement with FAO. FAO is the 146-year-old toy retailer whose landmark toy store in New York played an important part in the 1988 film “Big.”
    Over the next two years, FAO will run 685 toy stores in Macy’s. The two companies started testing the in-store FAO concept at a Macy’s in Chicago, which sold specialty toys, stuffed animals and other items.
    During the fall, 75 full-size instore FAOs will open in Macy’s. The remaining 200 locations will be up to 300 square feet.
    The Colonie FAO might be 1,000 square feet. The Colonie department store is the strongest performing Macy’s in upstate New York. The mall also houses a K.B. Toys store, which also underwent renovations last year.
    “Macy’s is a powerful draw now, and the fact that they’re putting in an FAO Schwarz just shows how far the mall has come,” said Colonie Center General Manager Joseph Millet.
    Colonie Center last month marked the completion of its nearly 30-month overhaul, which equipped it with a 13-screen Regal Cinemas and several new tenants, including a Barnes and Noble, L.L. Bean and Cheesecake Factory.

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Broadcaster
WMHT lays off
10 employees

    EAST GREENBUSH — The Capital Region’s only full-service public broadcaster earlier this week laid off 10 workers as it prepares to make inroads with new media.
    WMHT Educational Communications shed six full-time and four part-time workers. But the broadcaster’s board of directors followed up those cuts by authorizing Thursday the hiring seven new employees for the fiscal year starting July 1.
    Although the restructuring at WMHT’s East Greenbush headquarters does not mean it will reduce programming, “It does mark a shift in emphasis,” WMHT President and Chief Executive Offi cer Robert Altman said.
    That shift will see WMHT investing more heavily in Internet content and integrating its television and radio programming with its Web arm, which Altman said is in its “early stages.” Some of the five full-time and two part-time employees the broadcaster plans to hire will help the company with that transition. The broadcaster’s 2008 fiscal year budget is $8.5 million.
    “We felt we couldn’t fund everything without taking these steps,” Altman said.
    Even as the nation’s economic downturn compels corporations and individuals to hold their purse strings tighter, Altman said donations remain strong. He anticipates an uptick in income for the coming fiscal year.
    WMHT employs 60 and has over 30,000 viewers and listeners regionwide. Its stations include public television WMHT and WMHT-DT. Its weekly productions include the politically-geared “New York Now” and business-focused “The bottom line.” WMHT’s radio stations include WMHT-FM 89.1, WRHV-FM 88.7 and WEXTFM 97.7. It also runs RISE, a radioreading service for the blind and print disabled.