Sears at Ala Moana Center to close June 2, employees told
20120223-1273 BSN SEARS Sears announced that it will sell it's Ala Moana store to the mall's owner and close the store sometime next year. The small concession stores will probably be closed that are inside Sears. These are the people waiting to be served as they sit next to the Oceanic Time Warner Cable store located on the ewa side of Ala Moana Shopping Center next to Sears. PHOTO BY DENNIS ODA. FEB. 23, 2012.
Employees at the Sears store in Ala Moana Center have been told that the store will close on June 2, several months earlier than originally planned.
Several Sears employees confirmed that the announcement was made at a managers meeting Monday.
“We don’t know any of the details,” said one part-time employee, who asked not to be identified. “All the managers told us was June 2.”
Another employee, who also asked not to be identified, said she was told that liquidation sales would begin in March and that other Sears locations in Hawaii would not be affected.
“I was shocked,” she said. “We knew the store was going to close sometime, but they kept telling us it wasn’t going to happen until later.”
In 2012, Sears Holdings Corp. struck a deal with Ala Moana Center owner General Growth Properties Inc. to sell the store — one of the original anchor tenants when Ala Moana Center opened in 1959 — and 10 other mainland stores for $270 million. At the time of the agreement, Sears spokeswoman Kimberly Freely stated that the store would be closed in early 2014.
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