Former Sears stores are being transformed

An icon of American retail is getting new life. All across the country, old Sears stores have been undergoing major transformation ever since the retailer filed for bankruptcy in 2018. Spinoff holding company Seritage Growth Properties has redeveloped or sold off Sears and Kmart real estate bit by bit since its creation in 2015 — three years prior to Sears’ Chapter 11 filing — and Seritage shareholders in October approved a plan to sell all of its remaining assets and liquidate the company. In Greater Boston, Sears locations in high-profile, well-performing locations have already been sold off or redeveloped. At the Northshore Mall in Peabody and the Burlington Mall — two Simon Property Group malls — Sears locations that shuttered in 2018 became a Life Time fitness center and a string of restaurants, respectively. The recent spate of sales in New England include Sears locations on Route 1 in Saugus and at least three New Hampshire properties: at the Mall at Fox Run in Newington, the Mall at Rockingham Park in Salem, and the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua. In Cambridge, New England Development mulled redevelopment options for almost a decade at the CambridgeSide shopping center near Kendall Square. Now, both the Sears and the Macy’s stores on opposite corners of CambridgeSide are being transformed into lab and office space, with developer Anchor Line Partners and Northwood Investors LLC taking on the former Sears at 60 First St. Biotech startup Prime Medicine agreed to lease nearly 150,000 square feet there, with RNA editing company Korro Bio also leasing space. — CATHERINE CARLOCK