Geoffrey The Giraffe Unveiled At NJ Children's Hospital

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — Jack Stella, 6, from Colts Neck, woke up at 6:30 Wednesday morning. He was so excited to go down to the lobby of Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital, where he slept overnight: Today was the day Geoffrey the Giraffe would be permanently moved into his new forever home in the hospital lobby.

Jack has been living, in and out, at the New Brunswick children's hospital since April, his father told Patch. That's because Jack has Burkitt's lymphoma, a type of aggressive childhood cancer, and he's getting treated at the children's hospital. Bristol-Myers Squibb Children's is the state's largest pediatric care hospital, and regarded as one of the best in the greater New York region.

"He was so excited to wake up today and come down and see Geoffrey get moved in," said his Dad, who did not want to be named. "To have something that makes him smile when he's here, it really does make a big difference."

Jack was one of several child patients at the hospital who got to pull the black tarp off Geoffrey this morning.

When Toys R Us shuttered U.S. operations and was forced to downsize at its headquarters in Wayne, the company didn't know what to do with the 16-foot-tall, 550-pound statue of Geoffrey that had been a fixture in its corporate lobby.

Enter Joseph Malfitano. Malfitano is a liquidation expert who had been hired by Toys R Us to help with their painful process of closing up shop, which involved thousands of employees across the U.S. — at both the retail and corporate level — losing their jobs. Malfitano, who lives in Boulder, Colorado originally wanted to send Geoffrey to a children's hospital in Denver. That's because his own son was often treated there for type 1 diabetes. But the Colorado hospital could not accommodate Geoffrey's sheer size.

"Look at the size of it. It's not an easy thing to move around because it's one piece. You can't take it apart," Malfitano told Patch. "I was going to bring it to Colorado, but they couldn't take it and time was kind of running out at headquarters to get it out. It eventually would have been cut up and scrapped. They had to get it out of the building."

"So I posted a thing on LinkedIn seeing if I could find another charitable organization that would take him," he continued. "A friend of mine saw the post, and linked up to a couple hospitals, including this one."

Malfitano gave Toys R Us an undisclosed sum to take Geoffrey off their hands, have him packed up and shipped down to the children's hospital in New Brunswick. When Ken Rosen, chair of the bankruptcy department at law firm Lowenstein Sandler, heard that Geoffrey was on his way, he and his wife agreed to donate the final cost of Geoffrey's installation at the hospital. Rosen is also a board member at RWJBarnabas Health.

What happened to Toys R Us?

The lease at Toys R Us' Wayne headquarters is up, and now the remaining 200 employees at their corporate offices will be moving into a smaller space in that office complex.

"Our old office was 600,000 square feet and could hold 2,000 people so we really didn't need that facility any longer," said Steven Waxman, the toy store's executive director for facilities and property management. He was one of two Toys R Us representatives on hand for the unveiling, along with Michael Minell, who handled store openings. Both men will lose their jobs this summer.

All Toys R Us and Babies R Us stores in America closed for good on June 29. The Toys R Us and Babies R Us websites are closed, too. The U.K. and Australia stores will close down, but the Far East and Japan and China will still remain operable, said Waxman.

"The Far East will most likely survive, it's up for auction right now," said Waxman. "And Canada came out of auction and will survive. And (our stores in) Central Europe may survive, too."

Waxman said contrary to popular opinion, it was not simply competition from online shopping, like Amazon, that did Toys R Us in.

"We did over a billion dollars in online sales alone, so we were a competitive online player," he said. "But we had about $5 billion worth of debt and we had to make interest payments on that. It's difficult to find financing when you are paying that kind of interest."

"The debt just really put a burden on our ability to grow," Waxman said. "At least, that's my opinion."