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By Jorge Casuso

July 18 – One of Santa Monica’s eight Starbucks is slated to shut down as the coffee giant prepares to trim expenses by closing 600 stores nationwide, 88 of them in California.

The closing of the store at 732 Montana Avenue – which was on the complete list of the locations slated to be shuttered that was released by the company Thursday – still leaves a Starbucks on the trendy, upscale shopping strip and eight others in Santa Monica.

In fact, local coffee lovers still have 29 coffee shops and stores to choose from in the 8.3-square-mile city, according to a search of City business licenses.

The Santa Monica Starbucks targeted for closure is the only one on the chopping block on the Westside. Two Starbucks are slated to close in Los Angeles – at 4371 Crenshaw Boulevard and at 1005 West Martin Luther King Boulevard.

The state with the most closures is California with 88, followed by Florida with 59, Texas with 57 and New York with 39. The Seattle-based company will close 19 stores in Washington, including seven in Seattle.

By closing the 600 targeted stores, which represent about 8.5 percent of the company's U.S. total, the company hopes to boost profits and bolster slumping stock prices, which closed Thursday at $14.39 a share. The price had plummeted from nearly $40 a share in mid-2006 to $25.87 a year ago.

The first fifty stores are scheduled to close in July, and all 600 should be out of business by March 2009.

"Store partners will receive advance notice and more details from their leadership team once a specific closure date has been confirmed," Starbucks said in a statement.

Some 12,000 employees will be affected by the closures, with some offered positions at nearby stores that remain open, company officials said. Those laid off -- most of whom work part-time -- will receive a severance payment based on job title and current pay.

The company, which opened most of the targeted stores in the past three years (though not the one slated to close in Santa Monica), also plans to scale back the number of new storees it had planned to open.