Akron’s Chapel Hill Mall, already struggling in an ever-changing retail environment, is losing one of its two remaining anchor stores.
The Sears store at the mall will be closed by spring, with liquidation sales starting as early as Friday, parent company Sears Holdings Corp. announced Wednesday.
J.C. Penney is the mall’s other anchor store. The mall’s third anchor, Macy’s, was closed by its parent company in March last year.
The Akron Sears store is among four in Ohio and 26 nationwide that will be closed, along with 78 Kmart stores, in this latest announcement. Sears on Dec. 27 said it will close 30 other Kmart stores and 16 Sears stores nationwide.
Sears Holdings, which owns Sears and Kmart, did not give specific closing dates.
Chapel Hill Mall owner Mike Kohan said he learned about the Sears closure earlier Wednesday and will try to persuade the retailer to keep its Akron store open.
Sears owns its building at Chapel Hill Mall, he said.
“It’s not to their benefit to have a store out there with taxes and maintenance,” Kohan said.
But Sears Holdings makes its decisions on which stores stay open and which ones close, he said.
Kohan said he gave Sears Holdings free rent last year on a Kmart store at one of his other properties and Sears Holdings still decided to close at that site.
Kohan said that because Sears has its own entrances at Chapel Hill, the closure should not affect customer traffic elsewhere in the mall.
Chapel Hill Mall had a good holiday sales season, he said. “I’m happy with that.”
Kohan also said he continues to look to fill store openings.
“We are working to have some tenants come in,” he said. He did not name prospective retailers.
Kohan, head of Kohan Retail Investment Group in Great Neck, N.Y., purchased Chapel Hill Mall last summer for $8.6 million. He specializes in buying distressed malls.
Chapel Hill Mall also lost other prominent national retailers last year.
It was quiet throughout the Chapel Hill Sears at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday with about 30 people scattered throughout the store. The number included sales clerks, who made up less than a third of the people in the store.
A few people coming out of the store said they don’t shop there often.
Customers react
Buddha Majhi, 33, of Akron, said he shops at Sears because it is close to where he lives.
“It’s convenient and sometimes it has good sales, but if it closes, I’ll just go somewhere else,” he said. “I’ve only lived here four months.”
Tina Carber, 39, of Barberton, said she came to buy a specific flower girl dress.
“I saw it in the store last week and came back for it, but I don’t really come here often,” she said. “They closed the one at Rolling Acres. It seems like they are closing all the Sears stores. They are closing a lot of stores at all the malls.”
Souk Thanthavongsa, 48, of Akron, was with his wife, Deuan, shopping for clothes for their children. He said he preferred other malls because they offer more of a variety of stores.
“I prefer shopping at Macy’s, but they aren’t at Chapel Hill anymore, or Abercrombie. I don’t come out here a lot, but we were nearby today so we ran in to see what we could find,” he said. “I’m not sure if we got a good price, but I think we did.”
Not surprised
Rich Gotch, general manager at the J.C. Penney store at Chapel Hill, said he was not surprised by Wednesday’s announcement, given the well-publicized financial troubles of Sears Holdings in recent years.
“We lose an attraction to the mall,” he said. “That’s kind of sad. Sears won’t have a presence in the Akron community.”
Gotch said he never saw the local Sears as a major competitor to his store. Sears sells more “hard line” items such as appliances, lawn mowers, snowblowers and the like, he said.
His store just last year began selling appliances, Gotch said.
“That will be an opportunity for us to pick up customers,” Gotch said. “We had a pretty good holiday season. If you have the right attractions, the customers will come.”
The closing of the Sears store should benefit his store as well as other local retailers such as Lowe’s, Home Depot and H.H. Gregg, he said.
The Chapel Hill closure will leave the nearest Akron-area Sears stores at Belden Village Mall to the south and Southpark Center Mall to the northwest in Strongsville. There is also an appliance showroom in Streetsboro.
The cities of Akron, Cuyahoga Falls and Tallmadge have had ongoing concerns about the viability of the mall and have had discussions on how to help the struggling retail site, including rezoning to bring in different kinds of uses there. The mall was in and out of foreclosure proceedings in 2014 and was operating under bank receivership when Kohan purchased it.
Efforts last year to persuade Stark State College to open a new satellite campus in the vacant Macy’s fell through; Stark State opted to build a new campus elsewhere in Akron.
Other closings
Besides Akron, Sears Holdings on Wednesday announced the following Sears in Ohio will be closed by spring:
• Chillicothe
• Lancaster
• Richmond Heights
Kmart stores to close in Ohio are:
• Mount Vernon
• Gallipolis
• Kenton
• New Boston
• Reynoldsburg
• St. Clairsville
• Zanesville
“Sears Holdings will continue to strategically and aggressively evaluate our store space and productivity, and accelerate the closing of some unprofitable stores as the company has previously announced,” the company said in a news release.
“The decision to close stores is a difficult but necessary step as we take actions to strengthen the company’s operations and fund its transformation,” the prepared statement said. “Many of these stores have struggled with their financial performance for years and we have kept them open to maintain local jobs and in the hopes that they would turn around.”
Eligible Sears and Kmart employees will receive severance and be able to apply for jobs at other Sears Holdings stores, the company said.
Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com. Marilyn Miller can be reached at 330-996-3098 or mmiller@thebeaconjournal.com.