Sears Holdings has announced closings for Sears and Kmart stores across the country, including five in West Virginia: the Sears at the Charleston Town Center, the Sears at Meadowbrook Mall, in Bridgeport, and Kmart stores in Parkersburg, Weirton and Elkins.
Spokesman Howard Riefs confirmed the closings Wednesday.
“We have been strategically and aggressively evaluating our store space and productivity, and will be accelerating the closing of unprofitable stores as we have previously announced,” Riefs said in a statement.
The Sears anchor store at the Charleston Town Center mall will close in mid-April. The Sears Auto Center, which is across the street from the Town Center, also will close.
The Sears at Meadowbrook Mall also will close in mid-April, but the nearby Sears Auto Center will not. The Kmart at 731 Beverly Pike, in Elkins, will close in mid-March. The Weirton store, at 250 Three Springs Drive, and the Parkersburg location, at 1050 Division St., will close in mid-April.
All stores will begin their liquidation sales Jan. 6.
Riefs said eligible employees at all closing locations will receive severance and have the opportunity to apply for open positions at other Sears or Kmart stores.
Sears opened at the Town Center in 1983, when the mall first opened, and serves nearly 100,000 customers annually, according to the Sears web page for that location.
The next-closest Sears to Charleston is a Hometown Store in Teays Valley. Before the Town Center’s opening, Sears had a location on Kanawha Boulevard.
Jeff Linton, a spokesman at Town Center parent company Forest City, said in a statement that there are no specific plans to announce the future of the Sears space at the Town Center.
“While the closure will be unfortunate for those directly affected, we believe it will create opportunity for Charleston Town Center through creative re-purposing of the store space, and will enable us to welcome new retailers and other potential tenants who could not previously be accommodated given space limitations at the center,” he said.
The last time one of the Town Center’s four anchor stores closed was in 2000, when the department store Montgomery Ward announced that it would close the location as part of a nationwide shutdown. Charleston Urban Renewal Authority officials bought the space one year later, partly because of concerns that the space would be sold to a discount tenant. In 2006, Brickstreet Insurance signed a deal to move into the vacant space.
CURA Executive Director Ronald Butlin said the Sears Town Center property has plenty of potential for its next occupant. The store is across from the Charleston Civic Center and the former site of the Fifth Quarter restaurant, which was demolished in October. Three hotel developers are vying for the property owned by the Beni Kedem Shriners, Tom Black, recorder for the local Shriners group, told the Gazette-Mail in October.
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“The location is a great location,” Butlin said. “You just have to figure out how to reuse the space and bring the right development in.”
Butlin said it is too soon to determine if CURA would buy the space.
“I wouldn’t say yes or no, but it is possible,” he said.
Sears stores, which sell a variety of products, including clothing, home appliances, tools and equipment, are struggling across the country, with total revenue for Sears Holdings falling 13 percent, to $5.03 billion, since the third quarter of last year, according to the company’s most recent financial report.
Sales at Sears stores dropped 10 percent. Sears Holdings also has significant debt, including an unfunded pension and post-retirement obligation of $2.1 billion.
Sears announced earlier this month that it would close 64 Kmart stores, after closing nearly 80 Sears and Kmart stores in July. More than 750 leases on Sears and Kmart stores expire in the next five years.
Kmart has two locations in Charleston.
The future of the Kmart store at Elkview’s Crossings Mall, which was marooned by the deadly June 23 floods, remains unclear.
In another closing, the Subway restaurant at the Charleston Town Center will shut down operations Saturday, according to the location’s manager, Amber Jarrell.
“The mall just isn’t as busy as it used to be,” she said.
Jarrell added that the cost of rent and various fees became too much for the location to manage. The employees will move to nearby Subway locations, she said.
Another fast-food restaurant, Five Guys Burgers and Fries, closed at the Town Center on Dec. 4, after the company did not renew its lease.
Reach Max Garland at max.garland@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886 or follow @MaxGarlandTypes on Twitter.
