CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Sears has announced the closing of hundreds of stores in the past year.
And a store closure announced this morning hits close to home.
The Sears store at Sunrise Mall will be closed down by the end of the year.
This isn't just a store closure.
Sears has been a fixture in Corpus Christi for decades.
Many long-time residents probably remember the old store on Leopard when it was Sears Roebuck.
Sears has been at its current location since the mall opened in February 1981.
The changing economy and competition from online shopping sites have taken their toll on retailers like Sears.
At its peak in 2012, Sears operated 4,000 stores.
When the company filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2018, it had 700 stores.
That number dropped to some 400 hundred stores in February when a bankruptcy judge approved a $5.2 billion deal to keep the business going.
In a statement to KRIS 6 News this morning, a corporate spokesperson told us that Sears had made the difficult but necessary decision to close the Sears store here.
A liquidation sale will begin in mid-September.
The store is expected to close by the middle of December.
Sears started shutting down stores last October when it announced 142 closures.
The following month another 40 Sears and K-Mart stores were scheduled for closure.
And then in December 2018, 80 more Sars and K-Mart stores were closed.
