Bonita Lakes Sears escapes closure list

Published 2:30 pm Thursday, May 31, 2018

Sears Holdings Corporation on Thursday announced it will be closing 72 of its 100 “non-profitable” stores in the near future.

Its store at the Bonita Lakes Mall, however, is not on the list released by Sears Thursday afternoon.

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In Mississippi, only the Hattiesburg store on Turtle Creek Road is listed to close. No stores in Alabama are listed for closure.

In a news release, the company announced its first quarter financial results, which included a net loss “attributable to Holdings’ shareholders of $424 million ($3.93 loss per diluted share) for the first quarter of 2018.”

Sears Holdings generated approximately $2.9 billion during the first quarter of 2018, compared to $4.2 billion in the first quarter of 2017.

The release said recent store closures contributed to nearly two thirds of the decline.

In January, Sears Holdings said it was closing more than 100 stores in March and April of this year, 64 Kmart locations and 39 Sears stores.

No stores in Mississippi or Alabama were on that list. However, in November 2017, the company announced it was closing 63 Sears and Kmart stores by late January 2018, which included the Sears in Tuscaloosa and Kmart in Albertville.

The J.C. Penney store at Bonita Lakes closed last year after the company announced it was closing two distribution facilities and 130-140 retail stores. Geoffrey, another Bonita Lakes store, recently closed its doors after Toys R Us announced it was closing about 200 locations in the United States.

The decision to close 182 of its 900 retail stores in the United States — including Geoffrey’s and Babies R Us stores — came after Toys R Us filed for Chapter 11 last fall under the weight of $5 billion in debt.