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Sears shutting down 20 more stores

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ASSOCIATED PRESS / MARCH 2017

Real estate investment trust Seritage reported in a government filing Friday that Sears Holdings Corp. is closing another 20 stores as the ailing retailer tries to turn around its business. None of the closures are in Hawaii.

NEW YORK >> Sears is closing another 20 stores as the ailing retailer tries to turn around its business.

Real estate investment trust Seritage, which owns the 20 real estate properties, confirmed the closings — 18 Sears stores and two Kmart stores — in a government filing Friday.

(No Hawaii locations are scheduled to close under this latest round of cuts, but the retailer shuttered its flagship Ala Moana Center department store, one of the mall’s original anchor tenants, in 2013 after spending more than 50 years at Hawaii’s largest shopping mall. The company plans to open a showroom for appliances in the former Nordstrom building at Ala Moana and operates four department stores at Pearlridge Center and Windward Mall, and in Hilo and Kahului.

Kmart closed its Kahului store Sunday after shutting down its Halawa location earlier this year. That follows the closure of its Waikele Center and Nimitz Highway locations. Kmart has stores in Kapolei and one each on Kauai and Hawaii island.)

In 2015 Sears Holdings Corp. sold 235 Sears and Kmart store locations to Seritage as part of an agreement in which Sears leases the stores back from the real estate company. Under the agreement with Seritage, if a store is unprofitable, Sears Holdings has the option to exit the lease by making a payment equal to one year’s rent.

“We have been strategically and aggressively evaluating our store space and productivity, and have accelerated the closing of unprofitable stores as previously announced,” Sears Holdings spokesman Howard Riefs said in an emailed statement.

Riefs said the stores will close in mid-September. Liquidation sales will begin by the end of June.

The closures come in addition to the closing of 226 stores — 164 Kmart stores and 62 Sears stores — already announced this year, according to research firm Fung Global & Retail Technology, which tracks retailers’ closings.

Sears announced Thursday the opening of its first Sears Appliances & Mattresses concept store, in Pharr, Texas. The company said the store builds on the success of the Sears Appliances store that opened in Fort Collins, Colo., last year.

Shares of Sears Holdings, which is based in Hoffman Estates, Ill., ended Friday up 13 cents, or almost 2 percent, to $6.95.

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Star-Advertiser reporter Kristen Consillio contributed to this story.

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