Mike L says:
My New Year’s prediction: K-Mart closes in Billerica.
Mike, you beat me to it. I think it’s better than even money.
The news story that prompted this idea reports that Sears Holding Corp. is closing between 100 and 120 stores next year. Sears owns KMart stores.
Sears has not decided which stores will shut, but the Billerica store will likely appear on some Sears VP’s long list. My evidence:
- It is sited in an aging, ugly, bloated, sad, dinosaur of a strip mall
- Sears does not appear to have a good relationship with its landlord, RD Management. Remember back in April 2010 when the Zombie refused to host the Lions Carnival after 19 years? RDM wrote a letter to the Lions calling out KMart as the tenant that vetoed the event. It was a move that I’m sure pissed of Sears Corp. and distanced KMart from the community.
- Three establishments — Burlington Coat Factory, the Dollar Tree, and soon-to-open Big Lots — sell a lot of the same stuff.
- Retailers are leaving Billerica in droves — OfficeMax, and Fashion Bug hit the road following Friendly’s and D’Angelo’s restaurants. This has nothing to do with KMart, but this is no longer a pattern, it’s a trend. The writing is on the wall.
If you were the Sears Vice President tasked with cutting 120 locations, wouldn’t you take a long look at the Billerica store?
Even if we are wrong and the Billerica KMart survives these cuts, the Sears company is faring poorly, losing out to the likes of WalMart and Target. Will the parent company survive? If not early in 2012, is it only a matter of time before the KMart closes?
And where does that leave Billerica Mall Shops at Billerica? Will KMart customers be pushed to Walmart in Chelmsford? Will they take their grocery spending with them since a new Stop & Shop opened there? Can the Zombie survive without KMart, its anchor, which at 84,000 square feet represents a quarter of the malls leasable space? If you think Big Lots will simply take its place, consider that it will occupy only 30,000 square feet. (Take a look at the current mall layout here.)
Moreover, where would that leave Billerica as a whole in terms of services available to its citizens and overall economic health? Do we underestimate how much we depend on KMart? We have no control over what will happen to KMart, but what can we do as citizens to attract new businesses?
