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JC Penney returning to Seattle downtown

JC Penney is returning to downtown Seattle after leaving nearly 30 years ago, becoming the latest moderately priced clothing-store chain to set its sights on a growing number of shoppers who live and work in the city's urban core.

Plano, Texas-based Penney plans to open a store in the Kress building at Third Avenue and Pike Street, a block from where Penney once had a Seattle outpost and where Target soon will set up shop.

Although Penney has yet to announce its return downtown, real-estate sources confirmed it after months of speculation, saying they were not allowed to speak publicly about the deal.

City records show the owner of the 87-year-old building has applied for a permit to change its use from office and health club to department store. Records also show a permit application was filed and quickly approved last week for interior demolition work.

Penney recently opened a smaller-than-usual store in Daly City, Calif., and has talked about plans for additional stores in the 50,000- to 60,000-square-foot range, a bit like Wal-Mart with its 15,000-square-foot Walmart Express stores, and Target with its smaller CityTargets.

"We have some smaller stores on the horizon that we'll be opening in some urban areas," Penney's outgoing chief executive, Myron "Mike" Ullman, told Women's Wear Daily last spring. "It's a function of where the customers live and what their appetite for apparel is."

Recent moves at the three-story Kress building pave the way for the type of store Ullman described. The building's health club, which occupied the second floor, relocated elsewhere downtown. Vacant offices on the third floor were listed for lease this year, then pulled off the market.

County records show each of the building's three floors is about 20,000 square feet, and part of the ground floor is occupied by other retail tenants, including a Starbucks. That means the store would be significantly smaller than a typical suburban Penney — no larger than 60,000 square feet.

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