Party City store on Broad to close, Midlo location to stay open

The Party City location at 9130 W. Broad St. will close on June 30. (BizSense file photo)

The party’s coming to an end for one of the two last remaining Party City stores in the Richmond region.

Steve Fram, the franchisee who owns both of the brand’s local shops, confirmed Monday that his Henrico location at 9130 W. Broad St. will cease operations at month’s end.

His other store, at 12741 Stone Village Way in Midlothian, will remain open as usual and will be the area’s lone Party City location.

The Broad Street closure comes six months after Fram was thrown for a loop when Party City corporate, which had emerged from bankruptcy earlier in 2024, announced suddenly that it would be going out of business and closing its nearly 900 locations, including nearly 700 in the U.S.

Fram, however, happened to be one of only nine remaining Party City franchisees who between them owned 29 stores at the time. The rest of the chain’s locations were corporate owned and on the chopping block.

So, despite Party City announcing its demise in December, Fram’s franchise status allowed him to remain open and to continue using the Party City name.

He had hoped word would get around Richmond enough to turn the tide against the numerous national media reports and communications from Party City corporate of its going out of business sales at other stores around the country.

But the Broad Street store couldn’t regain enough momentum.

Steve Fram

“All of us experienced the same thing… basically our customers thought we were also going out of business. It was all negative advertising. It adversely effected our sales,” Fram said.

Sales at the Broad Street store had sunk to a level that he said it was no longer feasible to keep it open. And with his lease coming due, he’s made the call to shutter it permanently on June 30.

The Midlothian location, in a busy Wegmans-anchored shopping center, is still hanging in there and will be one of only 26 remaining franchise locations, Fram said.

Those stores still pay for the right to use the Party City name and pay royalties on sales. Those payments go to a firm called Ad Populum, LLC, which purchased Party City’s intellectual property in a court-approved sale, but have little interest in keeping the brick-and-mortar side of the business going.

With his decision made, Fram said he’s still working out what to do for his 15 employees at the Broad Street store.

“I have to say, I never did this before in my 45 years in retail never had to tell people you’re losing your jobs en masse,” he said.

But he said the employees handled the news of the closure surprisingly well.

“They all were very good. The manager two days later gave me a card, thanking me for being such a good boss. I was very moved by that,” he said adding that he’ll help the workers with recommendations to new employers, among other measures of support.

Closing the Broad Street store hits particularly hard for Fram. He opened it in 1994 as his first Party City franchise location in the region. It’s what brought him to Richmond from New York in the first place after previously running his own office supply stores.

“The West Broad store was my first store, so I feel horrible for closing that,” he said. “When we first opened it up, I’d be in that store from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., usually six days a week. It’s very emotional, very sad for the ending to come this way.”

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