Eastland, Westland Sears to close
A bad year got worse for Sears on Wednesday as the national retailer announced a second round of major store closings.
The closings will include the Sears stores at Eastland and Westland malls, part of 72 stores that will be closed nationally, including 16 Sears
stores, 49 Kmart stores and seven auto centers.
The company said the stores being closed were not profitable.
“A lot of observers were surprised those stores weren’t on the list before,” local retail analyst Chris Boring said of the two Columbus closings. “But that’s probably because Sears owns those stores — which means they have to eat the cost of closing. They can’t just end their lease and leave.”
The stores will close in early September, with liquidation sales set to begin June 16, the company said in a statement.
In January, the company announced that 78 Kmart stores and 26 Sears stores would be closing this spring, including Kmart stores in Mount Vernon and Reynoldsburg and a Sears store in Lancaster.
Sears did not report the number of employees affected by the new closings. Those employees who are eligible will receive severance pay and have the opportunity to apply for open positions at remaining area Sears or Kmart stores, the company said.
While most mall-based retailers are facing challenges and closing stores, Sears has been particularly hard hit by changing consumer behavior and growing competition from online retailers such as Amazon.
“And they haven’t invested hardly any money into updating their stores,” Boring said.
Things have gotten so bad at Sears that suppliers last month were reportedly holding back on delivering merchandise to the stores out of concern that the retailer would soon go bankrupt.
Even so, Sears does continue to have loyal fans. A few customers were shopping at the Westland location on Wednesday.
“I’m sorry to hear that it’s closing,” said Judy Howell of Galloway. “I’m kind of a regular customer. I live just down the street.”
The Eastland store was almost empty Wedneday morning, with no more than a dozen shoppers.
“We came out because we heard it was closing and we were hoping the prices would be lower,” said Mary Lucas, who lives near Polaris.
While the Westland and Eastland stores have similarities, “they’re in different situations,” Boring said. Sears has been the only store open at Westland for the past five years.
Owners of neither mall would comment about Sears’ plans.
“With Westland, the whole property needs to be torn down,” Boring said. “They need to start over. That property is the gateway to the whole West Side and it’s a blight. It needs to be addressed as soon as possible. It may have a retail component, but to think it’s going to come back as a retail center is doubtful.”
But Eastland has a chance to overcome the closing, he said.
“Eastland is a funny animal. I don’t think (losing Sears) is necessarily a death knell to Eastland. That mall still has a lot of fashion and shopping in its mix. Sears brought some traffic to them, so after Sears closes, they’re going to have to invest.”
The stores are being closed as part of a continuing evaluation of store productivity, Sears said in a statement, adding it has “accelerated the closing of unprofitable stores as previously announced.”
While Sears often hears from customers “who are disappointed when we close a store,” the company said its websites and mobile apps will continue to serve customers.
“As a result, we hope to retain a portion of the sales previously associated with these stores.”
The closings will bring the number of Sears stores to about 1,200, down from more than 2,000 five years ago.