Store associates told News Channel 3 the Kmart on West Michigan Avenue in Marshall, a suburb of Battle Creek in the western part of the state, will close but did not provide an exact date as to when it would shutter.
The Epoch Times has contacted Transformco for comment.
“It was always a go-to. Even before the big-box stores opened up in the Battle Creek area, they were here. So it attracted a lot of people here,” Marshall City store Manager Tom Tarkiewicz said. “Even after the Kmarts had closed around the area, people still came to Marshall because they really like the Kmart facility. So it’s going to be missed. Now, we can’t just run a mile down the road here and consume some odds-and-ends shopping.”
Tarkiewicz noted that the city has not yet been officially notified by the property owner about Kmart’s closure but that the city plans to work with economic development leaders to attract businesses in the area.
“We’re going to start working with our Marshall Area Economic Development Alliance, which does all our economic development, commercial tourism, industrial,” said Tarkiewicz. “Again, we have not been notified yet. We’re hearing it through social media ... So we'll be working with the owner. I met the owner just a couple months ago. He’s from California and I feel he will be creative. I don’t think the building will stay empty very long.”
Michigan is widely-viewed as the birthplace of Kmart, with the first discount department store opening in 1962 in Garden City in the state. Seventeen more Kmart stores opened later that year, leading to corporate sales of more than $483 million.
The department store chain, which sells everything from electronics to home decor proved to be a big success, and by the mid-1990s, Kmart had 2,323 outlets in the United States and another 163 elsewhere.
But Kmart and Sears later went on to merge as Sears Holdings Corporation in 2005 as part of an $11 billion deal as it struggled to stay ahead of competition from other big-name retailers like Walmart and Target.
