By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — Patagonia, the national retailer of outdoor clothing and equipment, will close its downtown store on Christmas Eve.

The local store of the California-based chain has been doing business for 18 years at the corner of Post Road East and Church Lane in the former Westport Bank and Trust building.

Signs announcing the closing are posted outside and inside of the store: “We’re Closing Up Shop … Our time here is coming to a close,” the signs say.

Employees, however, did not get much notice about the store’s closing, according to one sales clerk who did not want to be named.

“We’re all unemployed now,” the clerk said Saturday. “We found out yesterday [Dec. 1]” the store would be shuttered in less than a month on Dec. 24.

The staff later was told only the store was closing “for business reasons,” the clerk said.

Patagonia’s only other store in Connecticut, which was in New Haven, closed last year.

That means staff at the Westport store, numbering about 12 employees, she said, would likely have to move to continue working for the Patagonia company. Patagonia’s stores closest to Westport are its three stores in New York City or two in Boston. The Patagonia website lists 37 stores across the country.

The company also sells its labeled merchandise in other stores according to signs posted at the Westport store. Area retailers selling Patagonia merchandise include ASF Sports & Outdoors, 1560 Post Road East, as well as sporting goods stores in Wilton, Darien and Stamford.

The phone number listed on Patagonia’s website connects callers to the customer service department. An agent directed the Westport Journal to the company’s headquarters in Ventura, Calif., for more information about the Westport store closing. However, the corporate headquarters is closed on weekends, according to a recorded message.

Joy Lewis, senior director of North America retail for Patagonia, responding this week, said: “Our colleagues and the community were notified last spring that the store would close. We have been assisting our colleagues since late summer to find other opportunities within Patagonia and we have been providing resume and interview guidance for those who, understandably, do not wish to leave the Westport community … Westport employees will be paid through the middle of January while we vacate the space.”

A sign affixed on the building at 87 Post Road East — “Prominent Retail Space for Lease — was posted by David Adam Realty, owned by David Waldman, the developer of Bedford Square and Sconset Square. The firm has been advertising for new tenants of the space for several months, Waldman said.

Patagonia has been his tenant since the bank was remodeled for retail sales, he said.

“We have several clients looking now” at the soon-to-be vacant space, Waldman said. “We hope to have it rented by the end of January.”

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist and journalism teacher for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman newspaper for 10 years and teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University.