The doors to the last full-size Kmart store in the United States will close forever on October 20.
WJAR reported on Sunday that an employee confirmed the location in Bridgehampton, New York, will close up shop on that date.
“Kmart has been slowly closing stores for years since merging with Sears in 2005 under the management of hedge-fund CEO Eddie Lampert. Sears Holdings, the parent company of Kmart and Sears, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018,” the report said.
According to Fox Business, the department store chain ran about 2,300 locations in the 1990s. Transformco, which owns the smaller location in Miami, also owns a few stores in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“Transformco says on its website that the first Kmart discount department store opened in 1962 in Garden City, Michigan,” the Fox article stated.
“The Miami Herald reports that the Kmart store there leased out nearly all of its former space to home goods store At Home. That Kmart location has now been reduced to what used to be the garden department of the original store,” the outlet added.
In August 2023, Fox 5 reported the last Kmart in New Jersey was shutting down, and residents shared their thoughts on the move:
“It’s the end of an era. It’s yet another franchise that is gone. The whole world is changing, stores are disappearing,” one woman told the outlet.
“I’m actually very, very sad. I’m not too happy about it. I’m also disappointed, but like, it’s something that I get to look back on, you know? A memory that I can cherish for a very long time,” a young man said.
In April, all 371 locations of the 99 Cents Only stores began closing their doors, Breitbart News reported. The company’s executives said the “difficult” decision was due to causes that included “inflationary pressures.”
“The mass closures come soon after Dollar Tree announced that about 1,000 of its stores are scheduled to be closed after “botched” business decisions and a ‘surprise fourth-quarter loss,'” Breitbart News said.
“The locations to be shut down include approximately 970 Family Dollar stores, which Dollar Tree acquired in 2015, and 30 Dollar Tree stores to follow in the coming years,” the article concluded.
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