Coach store closes in Towson Town Center

Coach closed its location at Towson Town Center this week, becoming the latest store to leave the mall in Baltimore County.

The storefront of the luxury fashion brand was covered Thursday. A sign taped to the glass doors informed customers the store closed Monday and directed them to the nearest location in Columbia.

“We are sad to say goodbye,” the sign read.

Representatives of the Towson store did not respond to requests for comment Thursday; neither did Tapestry, Coach’s parent company.

Almost 25% of the four-story mall’s storefronts were vacant as of April. Several high-profile tenants have announced they were leaving Towson Town Center in the past year, including Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, Tommy Bahama, Madewell, Banana Republic and Apple.

The Towson mall is not the only one that is downsizing. Shopping centers nationwide are hemorrhaging businesses, with up to 87% of malls projected to close in the next decade, according to Capital One research. There were around 25,000 malls in the country in 1986. As of 2023, the number had dropped to 1,200.

Officials with Towson Town Square did not respond to a request for comment.

Online shopping is one of the drivers of the demise of shopping centers, said Nancy Hafford, the executive director of the Towson Chamber of Commerce. The dynamics of retail have changed, Hafford said.

“Unless people realize the importance of supporting their local brick-and-mortar stores, businesses are going to close,” she said.

Hafford tries to encourage people who shop online to have their orders shipped to a local store so that location gets credit.

Towson Town Center, which is double the size of most malls in the area, is an “extremely important property in the community,” said Hafford, who is also on the Baltimore County Economic Development board.