Starbucks to Close These 16 Stores

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 15, 8:30AM EDT

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Starbucks to Close These 16 Stores — © LeoPatrizi / Getty Images

Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX | SBUX Price Prediction) will close 16 stores this month, a tiny percentage of the 15,474 it has. Management says the stores are unsafe for employees and patrons. It is odd that almost all are in Los Angeles and Seattle. Surely, those are not the only unsafe areas across the country.

Cynics about the timing and locations of the closures say the effort is to crack down on unions that have attempted to organize workers in these areas. There is scant evidence this is true.
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As crime rises in many urban areas, Starbucks may need to close hundreds of stores, if it applies the same yardstick across the country. There is no reason to believe that New York, Detroit or Baltimore areas are safer for fast-food locations. If they are, observers of crime in major cities have missed something substantial.
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Logically, the problem needs to extend beyond Starbucks. Dangerous neighborhoods have to include McDonald’s locations, as well as those of Subway and Burger King. Managements of the companies, which among them have tens of thousands of locations, have to be examining the same safety issues.
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A possible future for the fast-food industry is that it shutters stores in urban areas altogether. This represents a problem for local residents. Many of these locations are among the few places they can get affordable food.
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According to CNBC, these are the stores that Starbucks will close in July:

Santa Monica & Westmount
8595 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood

Hollywood & Western
5453 Hollywood Blvd., D
Los Angeles

DoubleTree Hotel at 1st & Los Angeles
120 S. Los Angeles St.
Los Angeles

Hollywood & Vine
6290 Hollywood Blvd.
Hollywood

Ocean Front Walk & Moss
1601 Ocean Front Walk
Santa Monica

2nd and San Pedro
232 E. 2nd St.
Los Angeles

23rd & Jackson
2300 S Jackson St.
Seattle

Roosevelt Square
6417 Roosevelt Way NE
Seattle

East Olive Way
1600 E. Olive Way
Seattle

505 Union Station
Union Station, 505 5th Ave. S #505
Seattle

Westlake Center
400 Pine St.
Seattle

Hwy 99 & Airport Rd
11802 Evergreen Way
Everett, Oregon

4th & Morrison
401 SW Morrison St.
Portland

Gateway Shopping Center
10112 NE Halsey St.
Portland

10th & Chestnut
1001-1005 Chestnut St.
Philadelphia

Union Station Train Concourse
50 Massachusetts Ave. NE
Washington, D.C.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.