The Sears department store in the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, a Chicago suburb, will close on November 14.
Transformco, which acquired Sears Holdings after the company filed for bankruptcy in 2018, confirmed its plans to redevelop the property.
“We intend to reinvigorate and maximize the value of the real estate while enhancing the consumer experience with popular retailers that fit the regional draw of Woodfield Mall,” said Scott Carr, president of Real Estate for Transformco.
“This is part of the company’s strategy to unlock the value of the real estate and pursue the highest and best use for the benefit of the local community,” Larry Costello, Transformco’s public relations director said in a statement.
Sears will still have a presence in Illinois. There are 11 Sears Hometown Stores in the state, operating primarily in small towns by independent dealers or franchisees of Transformco affiliates.
The stores are typically between 6,000 to 8,000 square feet — far smaller than Sears department stores which were each more than 100,000 square feet — and sell mainly hard goods and appliances. Transformco’s strategy is to operate more stores like the Hometown Sears.
There currently are 300 Sears and Kmart stores still open in the US, down from nearly 700 in October 2018, when Sears declared bankruptcy. At its peak, the company operated more than 3,000 stores.
“I was surprised it wasn’t liquidated already,” said Reshmi Basu, analyst with Debtwire and an expert in retail bankruptcies. “History shows a [second bankruptcy] for a retailer almost always ends up in liquidation.”
CNN’s Chris Isidore contributed to this report.
Source : Nbcnewyork