The Sears retail store and Sears Auto Center at Chapel Hill Mall in Akron will close on March 19 with the loss of about 80 jobs, according to a filing posted Wednesday with the state of Ohio.
Some 71 employees will be laid off at the mall store at 2000 Brittain Ave., according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, notice filed with the state’s Office of Workforce Development. An additional nine people at the Sears auto repair store will also lose their jobs.
The layoffs are expected to take place over a two-week period starting March 12, according to documents on the state’s WARN notice website.
The filing says the Sears locations will be permanently closed on March 19. In a related filing, Sears said it will close its Richmond Heights store and auto center on March 26 with the loss of an estimated 98 jobs.
Sears on Jan. 4 announced it was closing its Chapel Hill store and others in Ohio and around the nation as a way to deal with years of financial struggles. Sears owns the building at the Akron mall.
The closure of the Akron Sears store — the last Sears in Summit County — is a blow to the struggling Chapel Hill Mall. The Sears is one of the mall’s two remaining anchor stores, along with J.C. Penney. The mall’s third anchor, a Macy’s, was closed down last year by its parent company.
The Akron Sears is among 42 nationwide that will be closed this year, according to separate announcements this month and in late December from Sears Holdings. The company is also closing 108 of its Kmart discount stores.
Sears Holdings did not give specific closing dates at the time of the announcements.
Once the Chapel Hill Mall Sears store closes, the nearest other Sears stores to Summit County will be at Belden Village Mall to the south and Southpark Center Mall to the northwest in Strongsville, plus an appliance showroom in Streetsboro.
Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him @JimMackinnonABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/JimMackinnonABJ.