New small-format Kohl’s at Tacoma Mall is close to opening. Here are the details

The long-anticipated new Kohl’s store, Tacoma’s first, is set to have its soft opening 10 a.m. Sunday (Oct. 30) with its official grand opening Nov. 4.

The store, 4502 S. Steele St., is next to Ulta Beauty near the Nordstrom Rack and Total Wine & More retail strip, which opened last fall as part of the new retail redevelopment at the Tacoma Mall.

Store manager Catarina Smith told The News Tribune in a store preview Thursday that the location is “one of a kind.”

“You’ll see a lot of what we call hyper-localized areas that’s really catering to our community,” Smith said.

The company says it is localizing the themes of its smaller concept stores, assigning Tacoma the active-lifestyle theme.

Along its “active hallway,” the main aisle after entering, you’ll find plenty of Columbia and Eddie Bauer brand clothing, among others.

“We have so many different hiking trails around us, we have Mount Rainier within a close proximity ... you’ll see a lot of those brands, and we have a whole active hallway catering to that lifestyle,” Smith said.

The store includes a Sephora at Kohl’s shop, one of hundreds opened this year, with another 250 set to open next year. The company says it plans “to bring a Sephora presence to all Kohl’s stores nationwide.”

To accommodate the smaller space, QR codes in the home furnishings department are set up so customers can look up a wider line of available items on their phones from the smaller sampling or “vignettes” seen in store.

The back of the store includes customer service area, Amazon Returns and self pickup.

The Tacoma store is smaller than the traditional full-sized version of a Kohl’s store. At 35,000 square feet, it will be used to “test and learn about new ideas and store experiences which may be used in new or existing Kohl’s stores in the future,” according to the company.

In May, Kohl’s introduced its “flexible store strategy” and plans to open approximately 100 new small-format stores over the next several years “in markets currently untapped by existing Kohl’s stores,” the retailer said in a release promoting the new Tacoma store.

“The average Kohl’s store of around 80,000 square feet is too large for many small markets,” it added.

Plans for the new $2.4 million store were unveiled last year, and Tacoma follows a pilot of more than 20 smaller stores in the chain.

The Kohl’s store in Bonney Lake, which opened in June, is slightly larger at 55,000 square feet. The retail chain has 20 stores in Washington, including Puyallup, Lacey, Gig Harbor and Federal Way.

Along with the Tacoma site, Kohl’s is opening three small format stores this fall in San Angelo, Texas, Morgantown W.Va., and Lenox, Mass.