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Sears plans to close store at Orange Park Mall

After 45 years, Sears is closing its last Jacksonville-area department store.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Less than three months after Sears’s store at The Avenues closed, the iconic American retailer plans to close its store at Orange Park Mall in the coming weeks.

In recent days, a large yellow “Store Closing” banner went up outside the department store, which has stood at Wells Road and Blanding Boulevard for 45 years.

The pending closing comes as Sears is preparing to shutter as many as 30 of its department stores across the country this month.

That follows an earlier round of closings late last year, including Sears at The Avenues, which closed in early December after more than 29 years at the Southside mall. Sears closed its Regency Square Mall store in 2016.

Transformco, which acquired Sears and Kmart out of bankruptcy a year ago, said in November that after 96 stores closed in February that the company would operate 182 stores, USA Today reported. That was before a new wave of store closings surfaced in recent days.

A closing date for the Orange Park store — the last remaining Sears department store in Northeast Florida — has not been announced. Messages left with Sears and Transformco were not immediately returned on Sunday.

The two-level store, which totals 189,796 square feet, is one of four department store anchors at Orange Park Mall, including JCPenney, Dillard’s and Belk. Other major tenants include Dick’s Sporting Good, Books-A-Million, Old Navy and AMC Theaters.

On Sunday, only three storefronts of the mall’s 125-plus retailer and restaurant spaces were empty. Two of those are set to be filled by Burger Barn and Charlotte Russe, according to the mall’s website, leaving just one vacancy in the food court of the 953,000-square-foot mall.

A Sears Appliance Outlet Store remains open at 11111 San Jose Blvd.

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