Children's Place to Cut 732 Jobs in New Jersey Bankruptcy Exit

The Children's Place will eliminate approximately 732 jobs in New Jersey by February 4, 2027, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed with the state Department of Labor on November 6. The filing covers all 24 of the retailer's locations statewide, including its Gymboree stores.

The scale is unusual in one respect: the company closing these stores is headquartered in the state it is exiting. The Children's Place bases its corporate operations in Secaucus and operates more than 500 stores nationwide. A chain roughly 60 years old is now withdrawing entirely from its home market's retail footprint, not trimming a handful of underperforming branches.

What drove the closures?

The company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after years of financial strain, according to reports. Three pressures converged: declining birth rates shrinking its customer base, mounting debt, and intensifying competition from national chains. Shifting habits compounded the problem — more consumers buy online and fewer visit traditional malls, the format on which most of the affected stores depend.

The New Jersey closures are confirmed. The fate of the company's hundreds of remaining stores in other states is not. That distinction matters for any employee or landlord reading the announcement: the WARN notice covers 732 workers in one state, and no equivalent figures for other markets appear in the filing.

Which stores are closing?

The 24 locations span every region of the state:

• Monmouth and Ocean Counties: Jersey Shore Premium Outlets (Tinton Falls), Freehold Raceway Mall, Jackson Premium Outlets
• North Jersey: Bergenline Avenue (West New York), Newport Centre (Jersey City), Bergen Town Center and Paramus Park Mall (Paramus), Westfield Garden State Plaza (Paramus, Gymboree), Ferry Street (Newark), The Mills at Jersey Gardens and Broad Street (Elizabeth), Main Avenue (Passaic), Franklin Square Plaza (Bloomfield), Center City Mall (Paterson), Willowbrook Mall (Wayne)
• Central Jersey: Woodbridge Center, Menlo Park Mall (Edison), Blue Star Shopping Center (Watchung), Quaker Bridge Mall (Lawrenceville), Rockaway Townsquare (Rockaway)
• South Jersey and Atlantic County: Tanger Outlets (Atlantic City), Gloucester Premium Outlets (Blackwood), Cherry Hill Mall, Deptford Mall

What does this mean for the affected workers?

For the 732 employees, the timeline runs to February 4, 2027 — a runway measured in months, not weeks, which offers some room to plan a transition. Roughly 30 workers per store will enter a labor market where mall-anchor retail positions are contracting, not expanding, and where competing chains face the same online-shift pressures that pushed this retailer into Chapter 11.

One number the announcement does not include: severance terms. A WARN notice quantifies job losses; it does not describe what departing workers receive, and no such detail has been disclosed.

The closures will also leave empty storefronts at 24 sites across the Garden State, from Freehold Raceway Mall to Cherry Hill Mall — a familiar pattern in a state that has watched once-popular retailers scale back or vanish for years. Whether The Children's Place stores outside New Jersey survive the bankruptcy process, the company has not said.