By 1808Delaware
It’s a bit of the bad with a bit of the good. In the middle of a 25 year celebration at Polaris Fashion Place Mall, it is losing one of its long-time anchor stores.
There are certain storefronts that quietly signal aspiration. For many shoppers in central Ohio, the Saks Fifth Avenue at Polaris Fashion Place was one of them. Now it is headed toward closure. As part of a sweeping Chapter 11 restructuring by Saks Global, the Polaris location is one of eight full-line Saks Fifth Avenue stores across the country slated to shut their doors. The store is expected to remain open through roughly late April 2026 before closing permanently.
For Columbus shoppers, that gives a few final weeks of normalcy inside a store that, until now, felt firmly planted.
The Bigger Picture
Saks Global’s announcement makes clear this is not an isolated decision. The company is restructuring in bankruptcy court with the goal of reducing debt and concentrating on its strongest-performing locations. Under the plan:
- Eight Saks Fifth Avenue full-line stores will close
- One Neiman Marcus full-line store will close
- Fourteen standalone Fifth Avenue Club personal styling suites will be discontinued
- Horchow.com will shut down, with its assortment migrating to NeimanMarcus.com on February 19
- Most Saks OFF 5TH and all remaining Neiman Marcus Last Call outlets will close, leaving only 12 Saks OFF 5TH locations operating
After the closures are complete, Saks Global says it will operate:
- 25 Saks Fifth Avenue stores
- 35 Neiman Marcus stores
- Two Bergdorf Goodman stores
The company characterizes the affected stores as a small, underperforming portion of its portfolio and describes this wave of closures as an initial phase of reductions.
The Stores on the List
The eight Saks Fifth Avenue full-line stores slated to close are located in:
- Birmingham, Alabama
- Phoenix, Arizona
- New Orleans, Louisiana
- East Rutherford, New Jersey (American Dream)
- Columbus, Ohio (Polaris Fashion Place)
- Tulsa, Oklahoma
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Richmond, Virginia
The single Neiman Marcus full-line store affected is at Copley Place in Boston. Columbus is not alone in this moment. But that doesn’t make the impact here any smaller.
What It Means for Polaris
Polaris Fashion Place has weathered retail shifts before. Department stores have come and gone over the decades. What makes this different is the consolidation at the very top of the luxury market.
This isn’t a mall struggling to survive. Polaris remains one of central Ohio’s dominant retail centers. But high-end department stores are being reshaped nationwide. Luxury retail is leaning harder into fewer physical locations, stronger e-commerce integration, and tighter brand focus.
That said, the Polaris Saks represented a certain tier of shopping experience that will no longer be physically available in the region once doors close. And that matters. Luxury department stores anchor perception as much as they anchor real estate. Their presence signals confidence in a market. Their departure inevitably raises questions about where that market stands in the national retail hierarchy.
The Final Months
For now, the Polaris Saks remains open. Shoppers can still walk in. Employees are still at work. Merchandise is still on the floor. If the projected timeline holds, the store will operate through late April 2026. After that, central Ohio’s luxury landscape will look different.
Retail constantly reinvents itself. Polaris will adjust. Another tenant will eventually fill the space. But this is still the end of a chapter. And for many Columbus-area shoppers, it is the end of a store that once felt permanent.
