Sikeston's Kmart listed among stores to close

Sikeston's Kmart is among 284 stores closing as part of the retailer's restructuring under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company announced Friday.

The closings will mean a loss of 22,000 jobs, presumably including the 72 workers at the Sikeston store.

"We express our heartfelt concerns to the employees of Kmart who are now experiencing the anxiety of job loss," Sikeston mayor Jerry Pullen said.

Pullen said he has asked Bill Green, the city's director of economic development, to contact Kmart Corp. in Troy, Mich., and find out specifics about when the store will close.

"We will participate in any reasonable manner we can to soften the economic hardship of those directly affected by this decision," Pullen said.

Pullen noted that the store facility is not owned by Kmart and is actually owned by Florida investors. He said the city was contacted three weeks ago by a real estate broker from Philadelphia who has been retained by the owners, and suggested that they had plans to keep the building as a retail store.

Expansion loss

Missy Marshall, the director of the Sikeston Area Chamber of Commerce, said that the store closing is a big loss.

"I hate that Kmart is not going to be a part of the expansion taking place in our area," she said.

Marshall said she was told by corporate officials at Kmart that the building's rent and lease agreement was a major factor in the decision to close the store. She said the chamber and the city worked to persuade Kmart to keep the store open.

Managers at Kmart declined comment.

The stores to be closed include 271 Kmart discount stores and 12 Kmart Supercenters in cities across the country, including Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Oklahoma City, Nashville and Phoenix. One store is in Puerto Rico.

In Missouri, two stores will close in addition to Sikeston's. One is in St. Peters, while the other is in Gladstone in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Kmart, the nation's third biggest discount retailer after Wal-Mart and Target, currently operates more than 2,100 stores nationwide. The job cuts amount to just under 9 percent of its work force of about 250,000.

"The decision to close these underperforming stores, which do not meet our financial requirements going forward, is an integral part of the company's reorganization effort," Chuck Conaway, chief executive, said in a statement.

"While the business rationale supporting this action is compelling, we deeply regret the impact these store closings will have on our associates, our customers and the communities where these stores are located," he said.