ToNeTo Atlanta has learned that Sears is currently working towards closing its store at Town Center at Cobb in Kennesaw. The two level store, which opened along with the mall in 1986, is one of five anchors at the property. Its closure, which will leave the mall with (for now) two Macy's, JCPenney and Belk as anchors, also leaves Georgia without a full-service Sears store. [JCPenney filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 15 and plans to reveal a first round of store closures in early June.] The Kennesaw Sears, which recently reopened to liquidate its merchandise, is according to several job postings, looking to hire temporary employees to help wind down operations.
Transformco, the company formed in January 2019 to buy the remaining assets of bankrupt retailer Sears Holdings Corp., announced plans this past November to close 96 stores by early 2020. The closures - 51 Sears and 45 Kmart stores - were scheduled to start this past February, with going-out-of-business sales slated to end in mid-April. It's unclear if those stores liquidated all on-hand merchandise before being forced to close due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the one Georgia store included in the list, at Augusta Mall in Augusta, has permanently closed.
The closure of the Kennesaw store will mean that there are zero Sears department stores left in Georgia (and a dwindling number nationwide), but the Sears brand will remain. There are still eleven Sears Hometown Stores and five Sears Appliance Outlet Stores in business around Georgia, primarily in smaller communities like Blairsville, Carrollton, Dublin, Jesup and Sandersville, among other markets. Both banners, despite being listed on the Sears website under locations, are today owned and operated independent of Transformco.
Kmart, sibling Sears brand under the Transformco umbrella, vacated the Georgia market in late 2018, when its final few stores were shuttered in Covington and Peachtree City.
Anchors like Sears, Macy's, JCPenney, and others, once sought after assets for malls, have in recent years become liabilities as more and more stores reduce their number and create huge vacancies. In some cases their departure creates opportunity for mall owners to backfill their "boxes" with higher and better uses, but this is not always the case.
At Cumberland Mall, for instance, where Sears closed its store in November 2018, mall owner Brookfield Properties has leased portions of the former two-level Sears box to Dick's Sporting Goods, Golf Galaxy, Round1 and Planet Fitness.
For its part, Simon Property Group, owner of Town Center at Cobb, was well underway with the redevelopment of a former Belk at its Phipps Plaza center in Buckhead before suspending construction in early April. The project, which started in late 2018, was to bring a new NOBU Hotel & restaurant, Life Time Athletic, Pinstripes bowling & bocce venue, and an office tower to the site of the former three-level department store.
It will be interesting to see if Simon opts to redevelop the Sears box at Town Center, or, as some in the retail industry predict, decides instead to further reduce its property count and shed malls like Town Center that it might consider "non-core," given it's not an "A" mall like Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza.
Simon has in years past shed both Gwinnett Place and Northlake Malls from its portfolio as it worked to strengthen its balance sheet, increase its occupancy percentage and narrow its focus to its most productive malls.
Several former Atlanta area Sears stores have been reborn as popular attractions. The site of the former Buckhead Sears is today home to the St. Regis Atlanta, while the former Sears store, offices and warehouse along Ponce de Leon Avenue in Old Fourth Ward was reborn as Ponce City Market.
Are you sad to see Sears disappear from Georgia? What is one item you bought or were given from Sears that you still have? What would you like to see open in place of Sears at Town Center at Cobb?
Please share your thoughts below.