Sears stores are inching closer to extinction.
One of the chain's few remaining locations, at 111 E. Magnolia Blvd. at Burbank Town Center in Burbank, California, is the latest store planning to close, according to various local media reports. The Sears name is already gone from the mall's store directory.
Sears reopened its roughly 119,000-square-foot location in Burbank in October 2023. Sears' owner Transformco had closed that store in December 2022 and then relaunched it roughly a year later.
In recent months several other Sears stores have announced they are going dark and holding liquidation sales. The Sears at Whittwood Town Center in Whittier, California, was slated to close this month. A large Sears at Plaza Las Americas in Puerto Rico will be closed, and one at the Florida Mall is up for sale or lease. And a 1,000-unit multifamily development is planned for the site of a Sears at Searstown Plaza in Miami, putting its future in question.
With those Sears gone, the chain would have just three stores left. They are in Sunvalley Mall, Concord, California; South Shore Plaza, Braintree, Massachusetts; and Cielo Vista Mall, El Paso, Texas.
Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based Transformco, owner and operator of Sears stores, actually owns rather than leases most of the stores slated to be closed except for Burbank. In that case, Canadian mall landlord Onni Group leases space to Sears, according to CoStar data.
Onni didn't return an email from CoStar News on Tuesday seeking comment. CoStar attempted to reach Transformco through the company's website but was unsuccessful.
At their peak, Sears and its sister company Kmart had nearly 3,500 stores. Sears Holdings — the owner of Sears and Kmart — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2018 in the wake of competition from discounters. The company was then sold to former CEO Eddie Lampert, who launched Transformco to handle its brick-and-mortar portfolio in 2019.
While Transformco has been closing Kmart and Sears stores ever since, it still owns a large real estate portfolio of former Sears and Kmart locations that it either owns or has non-owned leasehold interests in — in other words, the long-term right to possess and use a property.