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The final breaths from an old friend will occur Sunday when Kmart, 424 W. Oregon Ave., ends its 30-year relationship with discount-hungry consumers. Come 9 p.m., the Whitman Plaza store will close its doors after having endured years of declining sales. It has marked its march to oblivion with massive sales that promise to leave behind only bare walls.
Monday’s early afternoon shoppers coveted batteries, cereal, hygiene products and soup. Ample racks contained an assortment of shirts and makeup, while eight tables held shoes looking for use. Despite yearning for many items, Jill Schoorel purchased only one from the store, whose square footage exceeds 84,000, thus making it a “Big Kmart.”
“The deals will be better this weekend, but I could not take a chance,” the resident of the 900 block of Jackson Street said after exiting with The Beatles: Rock Band, a music video game that cost $83.99 — 40 percent off its original $139.99 tag.
Four copies lay on the floor when Schoorel arrived, so she wanted to buy one more Christmas present for her son Thomas before he heads back to college.
“I have to confess that I’ll play it, too,” she said before catching SEPTA’s 57 bus to Center City.
The Illinois-based corporate office for the former anchor of the 27-store plaza filed a notice with Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor and Industry Oct. 7. The closure will eliminate 114 jobs and reflects that the Kmart brand has fallen behind those of discount titans Walmart, which operates a store at 1675 S. Columbus Blvd., and Target, which peddles its goods at 179 Mifflin St.
Kimberly Freely, spokeswoman for Sears Holdings Corp., noted that liquidation of the Whitman facility, whose lease began in Nov. 1980, started Oct. 21.
The store’s pharmacy closed in October, and employees learned then that terminations would occur over a two-week period this month.
The impending cessation of operations has necessitated a final week’s worth of extreme bargains. Customers could have nabbed items at 30 to 60 percent off Sunday through Tuesday. Today caps a two-day period of 40 to 70 percent off sales, while Friday and Saturday will increase the savings to 40 to 75 percent off. A sign at the entrance announces that Sunday’s items will be “priced to sell to the bare walls,” and dozens of red stickers make clear that “Everything Must Go.”
The sprawling community shopping center serves as a hub for SEPTA. The space is managed by South-Whit Shopping Center Associates, an affiliate of Breslin Realty Development Corp., the New York-based giant that constructed the plaza in the 1980s. According to published reports, South-Whit refinanced the plaza for $16.25 million in October.
Breslin oversees 28 shopping center developments, which included Kmarts in five states. Director of Leasing Robert Delavale noted that his company will hate losing Kmart as a Whitman tenant.
“With every door that closes, however, another one opens,” he said.
Kmart contacted Breslin to discuss its closure, and his company offered a five-year lease extension, Delavale said.
“Kmart opted not to renew,” Delavale said, adding that the store never slacked in meeting its monthly lease’s obligations. “They asked to extend and stay open for the holidays, which we found reasonable.”
Once Sunday passes, Kmart’s space will undergo a couple months of infrastructure repairs, Delavale said. His company is finalizing leases with multiple tenants, whom he promised will be “regionally and nationally well-known.”
“The Kmart concept has been winding down a bit,” Delavale, who believes the plaza will not suffer minus the store, said. “Kmart’s replacement will represent newness, and newness always has a positive effect."
The great sales on Kmart’s items definitely had a positive effect on the purse but not necessarily the spirit of Mary Morrell, who shopped on Monday more out of curiosity than necessity.
“I’ve been shopping here since it opened,” the resident of the 1300 block of South Warnock Street said as she clutched towels she will use to clean her car. “It was always a convenient stop. I’m a little sad, but I’m eager to see what it will become.”
Fellow buyers seemed interested only in the present as they marveled at every aisle’s deals. Employees bantered with the customers, with two consumers expressing sadness that they would no longer be seeing their “store buddies.”
As the United States’s third-largest chain of discount department stores, Kmart operates nearly 1,300 stores across 49 states, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Specializing in beauty products, bedding, clothing, hardware, health and beauty products, home decor, jewelry, movies, music, office supplies and toys, the company, with its famous logo and numerous concepts, such as the Blue Light Specials, make it an unmistakable behemoth in its field. Sears Holdings generated more than $44 billion in revenue and $235 million in earnings in the ’09 fiscal year, according to published reports.
Kmart contends with Walmart and Target for customers across the country but especially in South Philadelphia, where their proximity to one another can spell doom for an outfit. In its last fiscal year, according to published reports, Walmart accumulated $405 billion in revenue and over $14 billion in earnings, while Target made $65 billion in revenue and $2.5 billion in earnings. Sears Holdings would not divulge why it is not renewing the lease of the Whitman location, Store No. 3516, but previous releases on store closures have noted that performance certainly counts in deciding a store’s fate.
Inside the store, a needless Application Center, a closed food stand and no mentions of “Attention Kmart shoppers” left no doubt that the plaza is only hours away from losing a chief contributor to its identity.
“I’m surprised that they’re closing,” Tony Izzo of the 1100 block of Mifflin Street said.
Izzo grabbed a few items but could not score a rocking chair he noticed over the weekend.
“It was gone,” he said. “I’m not an impulse buyer, so I’m not sure if I will be back before Sunday. I came here enough, though, to know I will miss the convenience, but that’s the way life goes.” SPR
Contact Staff Writer Joseph Myers at jmyers@southphillyreview.com or ext. 124.
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