Sears Store Near Cedar Park Among Those Scheduled To Close

CEDAR PARK, TX — The Sears store in Cedar Park is among the 72 sites slated for closure amid plunging sales losses for the retailer, the company announced Thursday.

The local store on the chopping block is located at 11200 Lakeline Mall Dr. Two other Texas stores in the Dallas suburbs of Denton and Lewisville are scheduled to be shuttered, along with one store apiece in Fort Worth and Laredo, according to a company-released list. All told, up to 72 stores may close this year but company officials ultimately pared the list to evaluate other stores' financial performances at a later time.

In declining comment, City of Cedar Park spokeswoman Jennie Huerta stressed that the store is not within the city's boundaries, but inside the borders of Austin despite its proximity to the suburb. "It would be unfair for us to comment on a store that is not located in Cedar Park," she told Patch. According to Google maps, the store is 3.6 miles south of Cedar Park via South Bell Boulevard.

Patch is trying to determine how many local employees that will be thrown out of work as a result of the imminent closure. Employers in Texas are required to file a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988) notice to the Texas Workers Commission ahead of layoffs — a move designed to give workers a heads up and time to seek employment elsewhere that enumerates the number of job losses. In response to an inquiry from Patch, TWC's director of communications, Lisa Givens, said late Thursday via email that no such notice from Sears had been received.

Calls placed to the Cedar Park Chamber of Commerce, the manager at the local store and Sears corporate headquarters in Illinois went unanswered. A spokeswoman for the City of Austin public information office also declined comment.

Parent company Sears Holdings Corp. released a full list of closures on Thursday, saying only the 72 stores (including the one in Cedar Park) would close "in the near future." The company has closed nearly 400 stores in the past year, and now has 894 left — including the ones it's now closing.

The closures come after Sears merged with Kmart in 2005, when they combined with 3,500 store between them. The latest closures comes after the shuttering of 64 Kmart stores and 39 Sears locations that have already shut down this year, according to reports.

With the latest imminent closings, the company end the year with fewer than 1,000 locations throughout the U.S. The department store chain announced the latest list of corporate casualties while concurrently releasing its first-quarter earnings that reflected a 30 percent drop in sales in the latest reporting period. In a desperate bid to stem those losses, the company has closed hundreds of locations over the years amid hemorhaging revenues.

To see the full list of stores to be closed, click here.

>>> Photo of Massachusetts Sears location by Mike Carraggi, Patch