Another New Jersey Kmart will be shuttered next year after the store’s bankrupt parent company announced 80 additional closures Friday.
The Kmart located at 213 Highway 37 in Toms River will close by late March 2019, Sears Holdings, which owns Sears and Kmart, said.
“As part of Sears Holdings' processes to accelerate its strategic transformation and facilitate its financial restructuring, on December 27, 2018, the company informed associates at 80 stores that we will be closing these Sears and Kmart stores in late March 2019,” a release from the company stated.
This brings the total number of announced Sears and Kmart closures to over 260 after Sears Holdings declared bankruptcy on Oct. 15 after years of declining sales and mounting debt.
The company’s chairman, Eddie Lampert, submitted a bid this week to help stave off liquidation this week, CNBC reported.
Sears’ advisors have until Jan. 4 to decide whether or not Lampert’s hedge fund, ESL Investments, is a qualified bidder, the report stated.
In October, it was announced that Sears locations on Route 35 in Middletown and at the Deptford Mall in Gloucester County were going out of business along with the Kmart location on Delsea Drive in Glassboro.
This was in addition to the previously announced closure of 46 unprofitable stores that was completed to be in November. That round included the Sears store in the Hamilton Mall in Atlantic County.
The company has closed 72 percent of its stores since 2013 as it tried to offset the revenue losses, according to its bankruptcy filing.
Liquidation sales at the Toms River location and all the other soon-to-be closed stores are expected to begin in two weeks, Sears Holdings said
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