HomeGoods To Occupy Former Borders Location

The former Borders bookstore in Mentor has been empty since April 2011 -- but not for much longer.

HomeGoods, a home furnishings store, is moving into the 22,000-square-foot space in the Creekside Common Shopping Plaza near the border of Mentor and Painesville Township.

They will be retrofitting the building and hope to open by the summer of 2013, said Mentor Economic and Community Development Director Ron Traub.

"HomeGoods is a new national retailer and we're pleased that they have chosen to come to Mentor," Traub said.

HomeGoods, a TJX Company, was introduced in 1992 and operates more than 300 stores across the country. It sells name-brand home décor, bedding, cookware, furniture and seasonal gifts at 20 to 60 percent off specialty and department store prices.

Traub said that HomeGoods filling that vacancy will attract more shoppers and likely more vendors, also, to Creekside.

Traub noted that Cici's Pizza closed not long ago and left another opening in the plaza.

"(HomeGoods opening) will probably increase the interest in that space, as well," he said.

After Borders closed its Mentor bookstore, it liquidated its remaining 400 bookstores in July 2011. The company cited dropping revenue and was criticized by retail analysts for being a Web latecomer. Borders launched an e-commerce site in 1998, but it was three years after Amazon.com and a year after Barnes & Noble opened its site.