Sears department store in Brunswick may close
Photo / Maureen Milliken
The Sears department store in Brunswick will close by mid-April, according to published reports.
Just days after department store chain Macy’s announced it will close 125 stores, another giant retailer, Sears, appears to be closing a store in Brunswick.
The Sears branch, at 8 Gurnet Road in the Cooks Corner Shopping Center, plans to shutter operations in mid-April, according to reports on local television and in USA Today. Further information, including how many employees might be affected, wasn’t available, and Sears did not respond to calls from Mainebiz seeking confirmation.
The closing would leave Maine with only one Sears department store, at the Maine Mall in South Portland.
The number has declined in Maine and throughout the country over recent years, as Sears has tried to shore up plummeting sales and its holding company ultimately filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. An Augusta branch shut its doors in 2017, and the Sears anchor location at the Bangor Mall followed in 2018.
Sears has since been acquired out of bankruptcy by a private company, Transform Holdco LLC, but the closures have continued.
Sears Hometown stores — independently owned, smaller businesses that receive inventory and marketing support from Sears — have also shut down. A Sears Hometown store in Fort Kent announced in December that it was going out of business, and one in Ellsworth closed in 2018. Other closures have occurred in Auburn, Madawaska and Waterville.
Today there are only two Sears Hometown stores in Maine, in Caribou and Farmington.
Founded in 1892 as a mail-order business, Sears at one point operated nearly 4,000 department stores and was the country’s largest retail chain, until being eclipsed by Walmart in 1991. Today there are only a few hundred department stores and Hometown locations throughout the U.S. The most recent closures, of 51 department stores, were announced in November.
The Brunswick closure would add to that number, and to a string of recent retail business contractions.
L.L.Bean, the iconic Freeport-based outdoor goods seller, on Wednesday said it is laying off 200 workers and will shutter its Lewiston call center next year. In November, Olympia Sports, headquartered in Westbrook, began closing roughly half of its 152 athletic apparel stores after the company’s acquisition. Eight of the 16 locations in Maine were slated for closure.
In January, home furnishings chain Pier 1 said it will close nearly half of its 936 stores nationwide, and in November A.C. Moore, a craft supply chain with over 145 locations, said it was ceasing retail operations — although a competitor may take over some of the stores.
There’s no word yet on whether any Maine branches of those chains will close. Nor is it clear whether the Macy’s closures will affect that chain’s sole location in the state, yards from the Sears’ outpost at the Maine Mall.
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