Macy’s Inc. is closing its Atlanta regional headquarters, located at 223 Perimeter Center Parkway, eliminating 850 jobs locally. The restructuring of the Cincinnati-based retailer will eliminate 7,000 jobs nationwide.
The Atlanta jobs range from administrative support to senior executives. Company spokesman Jim Sluzewski said two localized district offices with roughly 50 employees will open in Atlanta as part of the restructuring.
Some of the 850 local employees could get new jobs in Atlanta or other parts of the company. Everyone will remain in their jobs until the end of April, but the jobs are to be phased out in the second quarter.
No Atlanta-area Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s department stores will close, and after the layoffs, there will still be close to 4,600 Macy’s employees in metro Atlanta.
Sherian Wilburn, the president of the Sandy Springs/Perimeter Chamber of Commerce, learned of the layoffs Feb. 2. “Any time we lose jobs in the community, it’s a loss beyond the individual job. It’s a loss to the larger community,” Wilburn said. “We now have 800 people in the area without jobs, and the money they would normally have to put into the local economy isn’t there.”
It’s not clear how many of the 850 laid-off employees live in Sandy Springs, Buckhead and Brookhaven.
“The overall strategy is to put merchandising talent closer to the customer and centralizing into one place those things like buying,” Sluzewski said. The company’s central buying, merchandise planning, senior management and marketing functions will be located primarily in New York.
Macy’s will be opening 49 new district offices, with the two in Atlanta at the present Perimeter Center Parkway offices, just north of the Dunwoody MARTA station west of Perimeter Mall.
— John Schaffner