Connecticut
Babies R Us to open inside stores in three CT towns
A new shopping option is coming for expectant parents and their friends and relatives: Babies R Us is preparing for a comeback in Manchester, Plainville and Norwalk.
Six years after the iconic brand disappeared, it will be appearing as a mini-shop inside 200 Kohl’s stores around the country including three Connecticut outlets.
The Wisconsin-based Kohl’s chain isn’t giving an exact timeline for when the Babies R Us sections will appear, but is telling shoppers that it will happen before the holiday season.
“The Babies R Us at Kohl’s shop will feature a curated assortment of the latest baby gear, furniture, activity, accessories, and more,” Kohl’s said in its announcement this week.
“Adjacent to the shop, customers will find the best of Kohl’s existing baby and kids’ apparel and other offerings from brands like Little Co. by Lauren Conrad, Jumping Beans, Carters, Nike, and more,” the company said.
Kohl’s is limiting the rollout to 200 of the roughly 1,100 stores it operates in 49 states, with about a third of the Babies R Us shops targeted for the Northeast. In addition to the three in Connecticut, the chain will open 25 in New York, 13 in New Jersey, 13 in Massachusetts, nine in Pennsylvania and two each in Rhode Island and New Hampshire.
Kohl’s is banking on the Babies R Us name to bring more shoppers into its department stores and onto its online shopping site. It’s working in conjunction with WHP Global, a New York-based brand acquisition and management firm that purchased the Babies R Us and Toys R Us brands after the Toys R Us bankruptcy and liquidation in 2018.
The baby apparel market was shaken when Toys R Us, a one-time retail powerhouse, shut its stores along with its those of its Babies R Us subsidiary. At one time, Babies R Us operated locations in at least four Connecticut communities: West Hartford, Milford, Manchester and Danbury.
Last year, Forbes magazine described how WHP was working to bring back the Toys R Us brand in the United States.
“WHP focused less on rolling out numerous stores, and concentrated on spreading the message that ‘Toys R Us is back,’ ” it said.
WHP resurrected the website for online ordering, opened a flagship stand-alone Toys R Us store in New Jersey, and most recently partnered with Macy’s to create Toys R Us in-store shops at more than 450 Macy’s locations.
Meanwhile, Chain Store Age reported that Kohl’s has gotten some sales growth by creating in-store shops in a different field.
“Kohl’s in-store partnership with Babies R Us comes as the retailer has had success with its Sephora in-store partnership. As of the end of 2023, the Sephora at Kohl’s fleet had reached more than 900 stores. The shops feature an curated assortment of top beauty products in makeup, skin and hair, and are located at the front of the store,” the magazine said.
Kohl’s reported that has been bringing in new customers and building year-to-year sales in the beauty segment.
Whether that translates to the baby products field won’t be known until 2025.
“It will be difficult for Kohl’s to take share from competitors like Amazon and Target. While Babies R Us is a familiar brand and adding a lot of new merchandise will help, Kohl’s has struggled to generate store traffic for years and it’s not clear that this effort will change that very much,” Morningstar Research senior analyst David Swartz told The Courant on Thursday.
“The baby category has been tough, as evidenced by the difficulties at the old Toys R Us/Babies R Us and at Buy Buy Baby,” Swartz noted.
Almost immediately after Babies R Us vanished, competitor buybuyBaby posted a message on its website proclaiming “We’re here to stay. Shop with confidence!”
But within a few years, that chain, too, had tanked under the failure of a corporate owner, Bed Bath & Beyond. The buybuyBaby operation shut down all its stores by early 2023, but new owners acquired the brand and have opened 11 locations including one in West Hartford, the single Connecticut location.
If Kohl’s new deal with Babies R Us succeeds, it could be expanded to more of the chain’s stores, possibly including the 17 in Connecticut behind Manchester, Plainville and Norwalk.
“I expect that Kohl’s probably will roll it out to more stores since 200 stores is less than 20% of its store base. If it seems to be working at all, it’s probably worth expanding,” Swartz said. “Kohl’s has the floor space to do it, and it needs to do something to differentiate itself from others like Macy’s and JCPenney.”
Three hours and nine minutes. That’s how long the average Connecticut resident spends in the emergency department at any one visit. With cuts in Medicaid, that time will only get longer.
On July 4, 2025, President Donald Trump passed the Big Beautiful Bill, which includes major cuts to Medicaid funding. Out of nearly 926,700 CT residents who receive Medicaid, these cuts could remove coverage for up to 170,000 people, many of whom are children, seniors, people with disabilities, and working families already living paycheck-to-paycheck.
This is not a small policy change, but rather a shift with life-altering consequences.
When people lose their only form of health insurance, they don’t stop needing medical care. They simply delay it. They wait until the infection spreads, the chest pain worsens, or the depression deepens. This is not out of choice, but because their immediate needs come first. Preventable conditions worsen, and what could have been treated quickly and affordably in a primary care office becomes an emergency medical crisis.
That crisis typically lands in the emergency department: the single part of the healthcare system that is legally required to treat everyone, insured or not. However, ER care is the most expensive, least efficient form of healthcare. More ER use means longer wait times, more hospital crowding, and more delayed care for everyone. No one, not even those who can afford private insurance, is insulated from the consequence.
Not only are individual people impacted, but hospitals too. Medicaid provides significant reimbursements to hospitals and health systems like Yale New Haven and Hartford Healthcare, as well as smaller hospitals that serve rural and low-income regions. Connecticut’s hospitals are already strained and cuts will further threaten their operating budget, potentially leading to cuts in staffing, services, or both.
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Vicky WangWhen there’s fewer staff in already short-staffed departments and fewer services, care becomes less available to those who need it the most.
This trend is not hypothetical. It is already happening. This past summer, when I had to schedule an appointment with my primary care practitioner, I was told that the earliest availability was in three months. When I called on September 5 for a specialty appointment at Yale New Haven, the first available date was September 9, 2026. If this is the system before thc cuts, what will it look like after?
The burden will fall heaviest on communities that already face obstacles to care: low-income residents, rural towns with limited providers, and Black and Latino families who are disproportionately insured through Medicaid. These cuts will deepen, not close, Connecticut’s health disparities.
This is not just a public health issue, but also an economic one. Preventative care is significantly cheaper than emergency care. When residents cannot access affordable healthcare, the long-term costs shift to hospitals, taxpayers, and private insurance premiums. The country and state may “save” money in the short term, but we will all pay more later.
It is imperative that Connecticut takes proactive steps to protect its residents. The clearest path forward is for the state to expand and strengthen community health centers (CHCs), which provide affordable primary care and prevent emergency room overcrowding.
Currently, the state supports 17 federally qualified CHCs, serving more than 440,000 Connecticut residents, which is about 1 in 8 people statewide. These centers operate hundreds of sites in urban, suburban, and rural areas, including school-based clinics, mobile units, and service-delivery points in medically underserved towns. About 60% of CHC patients in Connecticut are on Medicaid, while a significant portion are uninsured or underinsured, which are populations often shut out of private practices.
Strengthening CHCs would have far-reaching impacts on both access and system stability. These clinics provide consistent, high-quality outpatient and preventive care, including primary care, prenatal services, chronic disease management, mental health treatment, dental care, and substance-use services. This reduces the likelihood that patients delay treatment until their condition becomes an emergency. CHCs also serve large numbers of uninsured and underinsured residents through sliding-fee scales, ensuring that people can still receive care even if they lose Medicaid coverage.
By investing in community health centers, Connecticut can keep its citizens healthy, reduce long waits, and ensure timely care even as federal cuts take effect.
Access to healthcare should not depend on ZIP code, income level, or politics. It is the foundation of community well-being and a prerequisite for a functioning healthcare system.
The clock is ticking. The waiting room is filling. Connecticut must choose to care for its residents before the wait becomes even longer.
Vicky Wang is a junior at Sacred Heart University, majoring in Health Science with a Public Health Concentration. She is planning to pursue a master’s in physician assistant studies.
Slightly less breezy tonight with winds gusting between 15-25 mph by the morning.
Wind chills will be in the 10s by Monday morning as temperatures tonight cool into the 20s.
Monday will see sunshine and highs in the 30s with calmer winds.
Snow is likely for much of the state on Tuesday, with some rain mixing in over southern Connecticut.
1-3″ should accumulate across much of the state. Lesser totals are expected at the shoreline.
Christmas Eve on Wednesday will be dry with sunshine and temperatures in the upper 30s and lower 40s.
Ten adults and one dog are displaced after a fire at the 1100 block of Pembroke Street in Bridgeport.
The Bridgeport Fire Department responded to a report of heavy smoke from the third floor at around 3:30 p.m. on Saturday.
Firefighters located the fire and quickly extinguished it.
There are no reports of injuries.
The American Red Cross is currently working to help those who were displaced.
The Fire Marshal’s Office is still investigating the incident.
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