Sears in Albany closing; Albany Kmart not on closure list

ALBANY — The Sears store at the Albany Mall will be closing at the end of March.

The Albany Kmart at 2525 Dawson Road was not on the closure list.

Liquidation sales will begin as early as today at the 26 Sears stores nationwide and 78 Kmarts that Sears Holdings announced on Wednesday will be closing, including the Albany Sears.

The closings announced Wednesday bring the total to 42 Sears stores and 108 Kmarts that will be closed by the corporation. The shuttering of 30 Kmarts and 16 Sears stores was announced Dec. 27.

Sears owns the space it now occupies at the Albany Mall, mall spokeswoman Debra Rowe said Thursday, but the mall’s leasing office in Montgomery is “actively looking to fill the space.” Sears may have a say-so in what retailer locates there.

“There’s a lot of possibilities,” Rowe said. “It’s a large space. We want to get it filled as soon as possible.”

Rowe said the announcement did not come as a shock when the mall got the news Thursday.

“We have been watching it for several years after they first started announcing store closures, but we’ve been lucky to not be on the list until now,” Rowe said. “We have been watching it very closely.”

Sears was one of the three anchor stores at the mall, along with Gayfer’s (now Dillard’s) and Belk, when the retail center opened in August 1976. J.C. Penney opened as the fourth anchor when a new wing was built in 1988.

The Sears outlet is the first department store that has closed since the mall opened. The Mansour’s space where Books a Million is located was empty for a few months before the book store came in.

“This is our first department store that will be vacant,” Rowe said.

“Sears Holdings will continue to strategically and aggressively evaluate our store space and productivity, and accelerate the closing of some unprofitable stores as the company has previously announced,” the company said in a statement on its website Wednesday. “The decision to close stores is a difficult but necessary step as we take actions to strengthen the company’s operations and fund its transformation.

“Many of these stores have struggled with their financial performance for years, and we have kept them open to maintain local jobs and in the hopes that they would turn around. But in order to meet our objective of returning to profitability, we have to make tough decisions and will continue to do so, which will give our better performing stores a chance at success.”

Eligible associates impacted by the closures will receive severance and will have the opportunity to apply for open positions at other Kmart or Sears stores, the statement said.

Albany’s Sears store was not the only one on the closure list for Georgia, which is set to lose two Sears stores and four Kmarts. The Columbus Sears at 5555 Whittlesey Blvd. also will be shuttered. Georgia Kmarts on Wednesday’s closure list are located at 3200 Macon Road, also in Columbus; 365 Habersham Village Circle, Cornelia, and 1601 Highway 40 East, Kingsland. On Dec. 27, Sears Holdings announced the Kmart at 33 W. Montgomery Cross Road in Savannah is closing.

All of the stores on both lists will close by the end of March with the exception of four stores, none in Georgia, that will close by mid-February or mid-March.

The closing were announced the same day that Sears Holdings officials announced that the company had obtained a $500 million committed secured loan facility. The corporation said $321 million was funded under the loan facility Wednesday, secured by mortgages on 46 real properties owned by the company’s subsidiaries. Up to an additional $179 million can be drawn by the borrowers and would be secured by additional real properties.

Sears Holdings officials said the loan facility is intended to provide the company with additional liquidity to fund its operations while it markets and sells a portfolio of its real estate assets, with the proceeds primarily being used to repay outstanding indebtedness.

“This loan facility will provide Sears Holdings with additional financial flexibility and support our operations as we meet all of our financial obligations,” Jason M. Hollar, Sears Holdings’ chief financial officer, said in a news release on Sears Holdings’ website.

Entities affiliated with ESL Investments Inc. are the lenders under the loan facility. Edward S. Lampert, Sears Holdings’s CEO and chairman, controls ESL Investments.

Sears Holdings closed Wednesday at 10.36, up 64 cents per share, on Nasdaq. It was at 10.88, up another 54 cents, just before noon Thursday.

Brad McEwen contributed to this report.