When Borders Group Inc. closes its six remaining bookstores in Hawaii over the next two months, 163 employees will be left without jobs, and thousands of square feet of retail space will go dark.

The closures of stores at Ward Centre, Windward Mall, Pearlridge Center, Royal Hawaiian Center and Town Center of Mililani on Oahu and Kaahumanu Center on Maui will leave many longtime employees searching for new jobs and several large vacancies in prime retail centers.

Borders, which filed for bankruptcy protection in February, is expected to seek court approval Thursday to sell off its assets after it failed to find any buyers earlier this week to keep it in business. The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based pioneer of the big-box bookseller concept plans to close its remaining 399 stores and lay off 10,700 employees nationwide by the end of September.

Hawaii employees will be losing their jobs at a time when the state’s economy is still anemic and unemployment stands at 6 percent.

“There are a lot of employees … that have been working here their whole lives, with over 20 years of experience, so it’s going to be kind of a shocker for them,” said Rein Zane, a 25-year-old Borders employee at the Ward Centre store. “I have two jobs other than this, so I don’t have to worry.”

Borders had already closed its Hilo, Kahului, Lihue and Waikele stores and had announced it would close the Royal Hawaiian Center and Mililani shops this year.

Borders has been an anchor tenant at Ward Centre and a junior anchor tenant at Pearlridge and Windward Mall. The stores, on average, measure 25,000 square feet.

The spaces they vacate should be filled by other retailers relatively quickly, according to local real estate brokers. Negotiations for most locations are currently ongoing, they said.

“Because our market has been pretty resilient, I don’t foresee dramatic changes happening in the market just because Borders is closing,” said Mike Hamasu, director of consulting and research at Colliers Monroe Friedlander Inc. “They do drive traffic to shopping centers — it’s unfortunate you have stores that will close.”

Roger Lyons, a retail leasing specialist and senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis, said, “News that Borders is closing their stores isn’t a surprise. That business model has been in trouble for quite a while now.”

Increased competition from e-books, the Internet and chains like Costco has made it harder to keep consumers coming to bookstores like Borders, which was one of the original retailers to enter the Hawaii market during the big-box expansion in the 1990s.

“Cause our lives are so busy now, I don’t have time to just sit there and read, so I have to listen to the book while I’m doing laundry or cooking or driving to work,” said Kona resident Velma Muraoka, who was visiting the Ward store yesterday with her husband, Curtis, to seek out sales and use up gift cards. “I don’t have the luxury of just sitting and reading today.”