TACOMA — The last Sears store in Washington state is not even going to make it through the holiday season.
The former retail giant’s store at Westfield Southcenter in Tukwila is closing Dec. 15.
Store closing signs are on display at the store, and advertised sales show items at clearance from 20% to 70% off.
An online sub-Reddit thread about Sears stores and related news first posted images of the in-store ads announcing the closure Nov. 15. Earlier posts indicated portions of the store already were lean on inventory or empty altogether.
The Seattle Times confirmed the closure. Calls to various departments of the Southcenter Sears by The News Tribune on Nov. 21 were not answered.
Parent company ESL Investments and its subsidiary Transformco no longer announce store closures. The last such announcement posted on Transformco’s website was Jan. 21, 2022.
When Sears merged with Kmart in the mid-2000s, thousands of stores were in operation. Now, there are fewer than 10 Sears stores remaining nationwide in four states and Puerto Rico; Kmart closed its last full-sized store in the continental United States last month.
Bloomberg News in October reported that Sears was seeking rent concessions from landlords for its remaining sites.
Meanwhile, conditions at the Southcenter site have earned poor online reviews. One customer’s review on Google, posted a week ago, stated, “Nothing is left. Soon, it is going to be closed,” while others noted escalators that were shut down and an empty top floor.
The Southcenter store’s demise follows Sears’ shutdown in September of its other Washington state store at Valley Mall in Union Gap. It also follows news of American Freight closing its U.S. stores, including its one in Tacoma, which was previously a Sears Outlet store, on Sixth Avenue. American Freight merged with Sears Outlet in 2020.
Sears exited the Tacoma Mall in 2018, the same year its Puyallup store at South Hill Mall was added to closures amid the retailer’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The end of Sears in Washington state is a spectacular fall from its history as one of America’s primary retailers, with its mail-order catalogs offering home shopping convenience to Americans and its annual Wish Books enticing generations of kids with pages of toys before the holidays.
The catalogs generated so much nostalgia that online archives are devoted to preserving them.
But nostalgia only goes so far, as a USA Today headline stated in October 2018 amid the retailer’s bankruptcy: “Sure, you remember Sears fondly, but why aren’t you shopping there?”
