Eastern Hills Mall Sears Closing

One of Buffalo's two last remaining Sears stores was announced to close prior to the bankruptcy announcement. This location is the Eastern Hills Mall in Williamsville, leaving just the Blasdell McKinley Mall location to serve the region alone. Bankruptcy documents suggest that store too may close leaving just a lone Kmart in Buffalo. Anyways, here's a look at the store during its final months: 

Goodbye Sears

While a move to Chapter 7 bankruptcy isn't out of the question, it is in Eddie Lampert's best interest in keeping both Kmart and Sears alive. He has given too much of his personal fiancees and time to see the brands come to a sudden end. While he is no longer in charge at Sears Holdings, there are plenty of indications that he and/or his company ESL plans to be a bidder to buy around 400 Sears and Kmart locations that are the most profitable remaining and keep these 400 or so locations open. At the time of declaring bankruptcy, Sears had around 800 stores. 

Rochester's Lake Ave Tops Closing

For the longest period time, one could easily of forgotten that Tops was in bankruptcy. There was little to no news about which stores would be closing until August and bankruptcy had been filed way back in February. I guess you could say they took their time determining which stores to close. Among the 10 stores closing, this store on Lake Ave in Rochester is the focus of this post.

The service departments are empty

Hope all you needed in produce are bananas

Non-grocery items cleared out

Tops aisle market sign. 

 

MetroPCS interestingly had a store within a store here.

In case you were wondering the 10 Tops stores closing (which are all in NY) are:

• 2120 W Gennesee St, Geddes
• 4141 S Salina St, Syracuse
• 710 Lake Ave, Rocheester
• 175 N Winton Rd, Rochester
• 6720 Pittsford/Palmyra Rd, Perinton
• 33 Forgham St, Lyons
• 381 Hamilton St, Geneva
• 909 W 1st St, Fulton
• 299 S Main St, Elmira
• 622 Lake Flower Ave, Saranac Lake

Former Kmart #3824

This month's Kmart tour is another now closed location in Hermitage, PA. This location was a '80s built store and would wind up closing spring 2018. This overall was a typical Kmart store with no special or unique features. When I visited this location in February 2017, it felt clean and organized; but seemed to lack customers. The electronics department also had a noticeable waste of space.