Bed Bath & Beyond, buybuy Baby close in Southglen shopping center

Aug 08, 2023

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Bed Bath & Beyond closed the doors of its Overland Park store, the last Kansas City area location, last weekend. Photo credit Ben McCarthy.

Bed Bath & Beyond and its subsidiary, buybuy BABY, closed the last of its Kansas City area locations Sunday night, when the doors locked at the adjoining stores along 120th and Metcalf in Overland Park.

The weekend clearance sales at the stores saw items marked down 80-90%, and no cash was accepted on transactions.

Both stores were nearly empty by Saturday afternoon, with last-second shoppers at Bed Bath & Beyond picking through scraps of the once massive retailer.

“Ugly shower curtains and hand sanitizer — no thank you!” said one woman, leaving the store empty handed.

Bed Bath & Beyond had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April and announced that it would begin the closure of all of its remaining 360 stores.

In February, all of its Kansas City area stores, except for the Overland Park location, were earmarked for closing, including its Shawnee Station location at 15400 Shawnee Mission Parkway.

Founded in 1971, the company had grown to over 1,100 stores by 2011, but was in financial dire straits by the 2020s.

Meanwhile, buybuy BABY consisted of just eight stores when it was acquired by Bed Bath & Beyond in 2007 for $67 million.

Despite its parent company’s financial issues in recent years, buybuy BABY appeared to be largely unaffected until earlier this year. In January, the company announced the closure of five locations, and by April all eleven of its stores in Canada were closed.

When Bed Bath & Beyond officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, all remaining buybuy BABY stores began liquidation sales. At its peak, it operated 137 stores across the United States.

Employees at both Overland Park stores declined to comment on the situation, directing media inquiries to an email address that went unanswered.

Adjacent to buybuy Baby is another unoccupied space in the Southglen shopping strip. Red Shoes closed in March, leaving Old Navy as the lone operating tenant for the time being.

These spaces, designed for big box retailers, shouldn’t remain empty for long, said area real estate consultants.

Last year, the Overland Park City Council approved a request by BK Properties to rezone the property.

A new mixed-use project was set in motion that will create an apartment complex with over 300 units, along with a grocery store of almost 20,000 square-feet.

This project, spearheaded by Overland Park-based MKEC Engineering and Prairie Village-based NSPJ Architects, will include the removal of the building at 12075 Metcalf Ave., which once operated as Southglen 12 Theatres, and later transitioned into a 24 Hour Fitness center.

The apartment complex will feature a pool, pickleball court, fire pit, and a dog park just to the east of the property. BK properties estimates that the finished development will bring almost 1,000 new daily visitors to the 119th & Metcalf intersection, which is historically one of the busiest in the city.

In July, the Post reported that the new Whole Foods would be opening in November, across the street at Overland Crossing, a development which continues to undergo its own remodeling since Legacy Development acquired it in 2021.

The Bed Bath & Beyond brand isn’t going away completely; it will continue to live on in cyberspace.

Overstock, the online furniture and home retail website, won the rights to the company’s intellectual property assets in June, paying $21.5 million.

On Friday, it was announced that Overstock.com would be rebranded as Bed Bath & Beyond.

On Monday, visitors to Overstock.com were redirected to Bedbathandbeyond.com. The new site relaunched with a similar look and feel, but with a larger selection of furniture and other home fixtures.

Ben McCarthy is a contributor to the Post and other publications in the Kansas City area. He can be reached at [email protected] with questions, comments and story suggestions.