Sears Holdings has announced that it will close its location at Harlem and North avenues, one of 20 stores the company said this week it is closing across the country.
Seritage Growth Properties, a real estate investment trust that purchased more than 250 Sears and Kmart stores in 2015, announced on June 21 that the trust was terminating its lease with the 20 stores, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The closings include 18 Sears and two Kmart stores, according to Sears Holdings spokesman Howard Riefs. The store at Harlem and North is the only Sears in Illinois slated to close.
Riefs confirmed in an email that “we are making the difficult, but necessary decision to close the Sears store and Sears Auto Center at 1601 N. Harlem Ave. in Chicago.”
“The store will close to the public in mid-September and the Sears Auto Center will close in late July. Until then, they will remain open for customers.”
That location will begin a liquidation sale on June 30, Riefs said.
“We have been strategically and aggressively evaluating our store space and productivity, and have accelerated the closing of unprofitable stores as previously announced,” Riefs wrote in the email. “We understand that members may be disappointed when we close a store, but our Shop Your Way membership platform, websites and mobile apps allow us to maintain these valued relationships long after a store closes its doors.”
Riefs wrote that the number of employees at the Chicago location is not publicly available, but he noted that the employees will be eligible for severance pay and will “have the opportunity to apply for open positions at area Sears or Kmart stores.”
Seritage put portion of the three-story up for lease earlier this year, along with its auto center across the street. The lease listing noted that 131,359 square feet of the 356,744-square-foot building was available for lease, along with its 27,030-square-foot auto center.
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