Last week, department store chain Macy’s announced its holiday season results and its plans to close 40 stores in the coming months. Shoe retailer Finish Line announced plans to close 150 stores by the year 2020. Yet what you never hear about in the national news anymore is how many stores Sears Holdings, corporate parent of Sears and Kmart, is planning to close, even as they continue to shut down underperforming stores.

Today, Sears Holdings caught the attention of the Los Angeles Times by announcing that multiple Kmart stores in the state of California would be closing. If your local store is staying open (or is long gone) or you don’t run a Google alert on the subject, you might not even realize that the company is closing any stores at all. Yet Sears Holdings has actually shed a lot of stores in the last half-decade, without splashy national announcements that would make non-locals notice.

Their annual report from last year shows that they ended fiscal year 2010 (which ended on January 31, 2011–yeah, finance is weird) with 3,949 stores, and ended fiscal year 2014 with 1,725 stores. Update: a Sears spokesperson clarified that this tally isn’t as dramatic as it seems: 1,238 of those stores that seemed to disappear from the national total in the last five years were actually part of Sears Outlet and Hometown, which were spun off into a separate company back in 2012. Most of those stores are still open, and sell Sears merchandise under different ownership.

There’s nothing wrong with closing stores, or closing them without announcing it nationally. Sears Holdings had too many stores, many of which are too big for its current needs. It’s disruptive and terrible when people lose their jobs, and can be very inconvenient for customers, but closing underperforming stores or giving up a location when the lease is up is how a business survives. (Sometimes not closing stores dooms a business faster: ask Radio Shack.)

The lack of store closing list releases means fewer “Sears is doomed!” stories in the news, which the company would certainly prefer. Yet once we noticed this pattern, we looked through news reports for scheduled closings in 2016.

Sears Holdings only makes this information public to local news outlets, and updates the number of remaining stores in their quarterly reports to shareholders. By putting together those local news reports, we can find most of them: let us know if your local Kmart or Sears has announced plans to close, and we’ll put it on the list.

Last updated: April 14, 2016

State	Town	Closing Date	Store type
AL	Dothan	March	Kmart
AL	Florence	March	Kmart
AL	Montgomery	June	Sears and Sears Auto Center
AL	Prattville	March	Kmart
AZ	Prescott Valley	April	Kmart
CA	Anaheim	March	Kmart
CA	Chula Vista	March	Kmart
CA	Citrus Heights	April	Kmart
CA	San Mateo	April	Sears
CO	Brighton	April	Kmart
CO	Fort Collins	May	Kmart
FL	Lutz	March	Kmart
FL	Daytona	March	Kmart
GA	Carrolton	April	Kmart
GA	Dublin	April	Kmart
GA	Milledgeville	April	Kmart
GA	Rome	March	Sears and Sears Auto Center
HI	Honolulu	March	Kmart
IA	Ottumwa	April	Kmart
ID	Pocatello	April	Kmart
IL	Bradley	May	Kmart
IL	Canton	April	Kmart
IL	Morton	April	Kmart
IN	Bloomington	June	Sears
IN	Terre Haute	April	Kmart
KS	Topeka	April	Kmart
MA	Fall River	May	Kmart
MI	Fort Gratiot	March	Sears and Sears Auto Center
MI	Ironwood	April	Kmart
MN	Dundas	April	Kmart
MN	Virginia	April	Kmart
NE	Omaha	March	Kmart
NJ	Lodi	April	Kmart
NM	Albuquerque	June	Sears Auto Center closing – Sears store will shrink by 50%
NY	Staten Island	February	Sears Auto Center
OH	Boardman	April	Kmart
OH	Canton	April	Kmart
OH	Lancaster	May	Kmart
OH	Sandusky	June	Sears and Sears Auto Center
OH	Steubenville	April	Kmart
OH	Steubenville	June	Sears and Sears Auto Center
OH	Warren	April	Kmart
PA	Monaca	June	Sears and Sears Auto Center
PA	Quakertown	May	Kmart
PA	Scranton	July	Sears and Sears Auto Center
SC	North Augusta	May	Kmart
SD	Mitchell	April	Kmart
SD	Pierre	March	Kmart
TN	Cleveland	March	Kmart
TN	Murfreesboro	April	Kmart
UT	Logan	April	Kmart
UT	Richfield	April	Kmart
VA	Cedar Bluff	April	Kmart
VA	Chester	July	Kmart
VA	Covington	March	Kmart
VA	Virginia Beach	April	Kmart
VT	South Burlington	January	Kmart
WI	Superior	April	Kmart

 

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.