Kmart’s sole location in Arkansas’ capital city is set to close later this year, and the financially struggling retailer said its part of its continuing effort to become more efficient in a changing market.
The Little Rock location at 10901 N. Rodney Parham Road is set to begin its liquidation sale June 15, according to a Sears Holdings spokesman. It will close by early September.
“We have been strategically and aggressively evaluating our store space and productivity,” spokesman Howard Riefs said in a statement, adding that Kmart’s parent company has “accelerated the closing of unprofitable stores as previously announced.”
Riefs said that certain employees of the Little Rock Kmart, which has been in operation for more than 40 years, will be eligible for severance.
Other workers can also apply for open positions at nearby Kmart or Sears stores.
The Rodney Parham Road location, built as a 96,000-square-foot store, has been open since June 1974 on the city’s west side.
At the time, Little Rock had another Kmart store at Asher and University avenues. That location closed in early 2003, about a year after the company filed for bankruptcy, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette previously reported.
When Kmart declared bankruptcy in January 2002, it had 12 stores in the state.
With the Rodney Parham Road store closure, two other Kmart locations now remain in Arkansas: one in Russellville and another in Cabot.
Online news website Business Insider on Tuesday published a list of 72 soon-to-be-shuttered Sears Holdings properties, including 49 Kmart stores and 16 Sears stores.
Little Rock’s Kmart was the only Arkansas store included in that list. No Sears locations in the state were listed.
Read Thursday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.