The chickens have come home to roost. Last week brought the news of my former employer, Lord & Taylor selling their landmark 5th Avenue store to WeWork. Plans call for WeWork to leave Lord & Taylor with just 3 floors of selling floor space.

The sale of this property is long overdue. The decline in store sales due to new market entrants, new retail models and online sales has been taking place for well over a decade. This has left department stores with the harsh reality of grooming their store footprint and delivery model. Stores cannot remain open or at current scale with the declining sales per square foot.

While sad to see this type of news, we still have a considerable amount of grooming to go through within retail. The new retail models and entrants are the refreshing and needed change this industry needs to regain health.