Area malls grapple with closures of former ‘anchors’

Area malls grapple with closures of former ‘anchors’

The shutdown of Saks Fifth Avenue’s Friendship Heights and Tysons stores this month leaves its landlords with hundreds of thousands of square feet to refill or repurpose. Those and other department store closures also have retail experts rethinking the traditional mall anchor store. “Anchor stores play the major role in drawing foot traffic into the shopping malls and other retail tenants benefit from that,” said Jie Zhang, a retail and marketin…