The Northwest Arkansas Mall will soon be losing a major tenant.
Sears Holdings announced plans to close 63 stores including 18 Sears stores and 45 Kmart locations in late January 2018, and the Fayetteville location inside the mall is one of the stores that will be affected by the closures.
The stores will remain open through the holiday season, and employees will get severance pay and the opportunity to apply for other jobs within the company, according to a statement issued last week.
“Sears Holdings continues its strategic assessment of the productivity of our Kmart and Sears store base and will continue to right size our store footprint in number and size,” the company said in the statement. “In the process, as previously announced we will continue to close some unprofitable stores as we transform our business model so that our physical store footprint and our digital capabilities match the needs and preferences of our members.”
Liquidation sales are set to begin this week.
Sears, along with JC Penny and Dillard’s, has been one of the anchor tenants for the Northwest Arkansas Mall, which has lost several other prominent retail tenants in recent years. Traffic in malls across the country has been steadily declining as consumers continue the shift toward shopping online.
