Urban Outfitters has closed in downtown Montclair, and the timing has nothing to do with money trouble.
Thursday, July 23, was the last day at 20 South Park Street. Store staff confirmed the closure directly to the Montclair Girl, and shoppers reported steep discounts as the two-story location cleared its remaining inventory. The store opened in 2006 as Urban Outfitters’ first location in New Jersey, built out across 12,500 square feet on what was then a furniture store site. Nearly twenty years later, it’s gone.
URBN, the publicly traded parent company behind Urban Outfitters, just posted a record first quarter. Comparable sales, which track a store’s revenue against the same period last year, rose company-wide, and the Urban Outfitters brand itself grew 9.3 percent. This wasn’t a chain in decline pulling back. It was a healthy company closing one store on South Park Street while opening a new one, Free People, two blocks away on Bloomfield Avenue, where another sister brand Anthropologie already operates. So the question on what led to the closure remains.
Why Did Urban Outfitters Close in Montclair?
The company hasn’t publicly explained why it closed its Montclair store. So The Montclair Pod asked two people who closely follow downtown retail and commercial real estate for their perspectives.
Cesar Claro, the new executive director of the Montclair Center Business Improvement District, emphasized that any explanation is ultimately speculation because URBN hasn’t commented publicly. But from a retail leasing standpoint, he said the timing makes sense. Urban Outfitters opened in the summer of 2006, making it reasonable to assume the lease had come up for renewal. He also noted that many national retailers are shrinking their footprints. “The Montclair location was over 40% larger in square footage than the average Urban Outfitters store, so ultimately this may have just been a prudent business decision,” Claro said.
Dave Placek, managing partner of BDP Holdings and the developer behind the Lackawanna Plaza redevelopment, offered a different theory rooted in downtown retail dynamics. He stressed that he has no inside knowledge of URBN’s decision, but said location and brand strategy may have played a role.
Urban Outfitters sat on South Park Street, just off Bloomfield Avenue, Montclair’s primary retail corridor. That block doesn’t attract the same volume of pedestrian traffic, he said, while Anthropologie and Free People both occupy highly visible storefronts directly on Bloomfield Avenue—”a huge plus for visibility and brand exposure.”
Placek also questioned whether it still made sense for URBN to operate three brands in such a small market. Since Urban Outfitters opened nearly 20 years ago, Montclair’s retail landscape has evolved. In his view, the company may have decided to consolidate around its stronger-performing concepts, closing Urban Outfitters while keeping Anthropologie and expanding Free People in a more prominent location.
How Do Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Free People Actually Compare?
The three brands split cleanly by shopper age and price point, and that split explains why URBN might see them as overlapping in a small town.
Urban Outfitters targets the youngest shoppers, college age through the early twenties, with fast-fashion basics, graphic tees and vinyl records. It’s the most affordable of the three, not cheap, but the entry point in the family. Free People skews older, twenties through thirties and up, built around bohemian dresses and festival wear, priced higher than Urban Outfitters. Anthropologie sits at the top, aimed at shoppers in their thirties and forties and beyond, pairing artisanal clothing with a home goods business, drawer pulls, patterned dinnerware, candles.
What Are Montclair Residents Saying About the Closure?
Commenters on the Pod’s Instagram called the timing abrupt. One described it as a “quiet exit” from town, like the store packed up overnight, and another offered a theory that lines up closely with Placek’s own: “I think with Free People coming in it was too many stores in a small radius from the same company. Every time I went into Urban it was empty.”
Others reacted to what the store meant, not just why it left. “Truly the end of an era,” one commenter wrote. “It was part of the old Montclair.” Another said they helped set up the store for its original grand opening in 2006.
One commenter pushed back on the assumption that a profitable parent company means a profitable location, and it’s a fair point worth sitting with. Rent, labor and utilities stack up regardless of what URBN’s overall balance sheet says, and profitable companies close underperforming stores all the time. Nobody outside URBN’s finance department knows whether this specific address was pulling its weight. What everyone in Montclair does know is that the space is empty, and that raises the next question.
What Could Take Its Place on South Park Street?
The Pod polled its Instagram followers on what should move in. More than 900 people voted across four options. About half chose another clothing retailer. Twenty-one percent wanted something family and entertainment oriented. Fifteen percent wanted food. And another 15 percent wanted a furniture or home store.
Nothing is confirmed yet. The building sits empty for now, two full floors in the middle of downtown. Anthropologie and Free People remain open on Bloomfield Avenue if URBN’s other brands are what you’re after.
What goes into 20 South Park Street next will shape downtown Montclair’s retail mix for years.
Image credit: Yelp
