A 110-Year-Old Florida Off-Pricer Is Quietly Becoming a National Tenant to Watch

Bealls doesn't get the headlines that TJX and Ross command, but the Bradenton, Florida-based retailer is putting together one of the more interesting expansion stories in off-price — and landlords well beyond the Sunbelt should be paying attention.

The privately held, family-owned company — founded in 1915 and now operating more than 660 stores under the Bealls, Bealls Florida and Home Centric banners — plans to open 13 new stores across six states this fall. That's the near-term slice of a larger program: roughly 25 stores across a dozen states between fall 2026 and spring 2027, averaging about 20,800 square feet apiece.

The most notable line in the plan is a market entry. Bealls will plant its flag in Michigan for the first time, with five locations planned — a meaningful bet on a state far from its Florida roots. The rest of the pipeline runs through Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas, a footprint map that increasingly looks less like a regional Southeast chain and more like a national junior-anchor program in the making.

For shopping center owners, the format is a familiar and workable one: at roughly 20,000 square feet, Bealls slots neatly into the junior-box vacancies left behind by shrinking or departed mid-size tenants, and it co-tenants naturally with the grocery- and value-anchored centers where off-price traffic thrives.

The store growth comes paired with an investment on the buying side. Bealls opened a buying office in New York City's Garment District in 2024 and has now expanded it, a move the company says gives it deeper access to brands, vendor partnerships and merchant talent — the raw material of any off-price model.

"The expanded New York office can only strengthen our position among top off-price retailers," said Suzanne Santangelo, Bealls' director of communications, who added that investments like these have been key to building the loyalty that keeps guests coming back.

That sequencing matters. Off-price only works if the buy is good, and a larger NYC merchant operation signals Bealls intends to compete for closeout and packaway product against much bigger rivals — not just backfill real estate.

The off-price sector remains the most reliable engine of new-store demand in softlines retail. TJX has penciled in 146 net new stores this year, Burlington is targeting 115, Ross expects around 110, and Nordstrom is adding 23 Rack locations. Meanwhile, the collapse of Saks Off 5th's off-price business has left share — and space — on the table.

Against that backdrop, Bealls' 25-store program is modest in absolute terms but strategically pointed: while the giants densify existing markets, Bealls is using its size to move quickly into underserved ones. For landlords in secondary Midwest and Mid-South markets that rarely make the expansion lists of the big three, a growing, century-old, family-owned off-pricer with no debt-driven urgency may be one of the more dependable tenants to court heading into 2027.