The Sears store at Park Place may soon shrink in size to take in a roommate.
More than 104,000 square feet of space on the Broadway-facing end of the store is available for lease.
In 2015, Sears sold more than 200 Sears and Kmart stores to Seritage Growth Properties and gave them the right to lease half of the stores’ space.
It is a strategy that Seritage has adopted at several of the stores across the country as the retailer struggles with slow sales and excess floor space.
The primary asset, the real estate, is now being used to keep the stores open.
“If you look at their real estate across the country, they have the best,†said Greg Furrier, a local commercial broker with Picor. “If you think about the quality of their locations it makes a lot of sense.â€
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An advertising brochure for the Park Place store says there is a population of more than 250,000 within five miles of the mall with an average household income of $53,214.
“Obviously they’ve looked at it and decided they can make more money renting the space than selling merchandise,†Furrier said.
Currently, only the store at Park Place, 5950 E. Broadway, is offering space for lease.
“That’s the only one you could physically do that with,†Furrier said. The ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Mall location doesn’t have significant visibility from North Oracle Road.
The broker for the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ property, Western Retail Advisors, declined to comment. Seritage Growth Properties referred questions to Sears. Requests for an interview with Sears officials went unanswered.
Sears would continue to operate in about 221,000 square feet on the southern end of the Park Place store, the leasing brochure states.
Seritage has already successfully leased space in several other Sears stores around the country. Last year, it entered a lease agreement with a European fashion retailer to move into part of its space at the Burlington Mall in Massachusetts and South Shore Plaza in Braintree, Mass.
Built in the 1960s, before Park Place was developed, the Sears building on Broadway has a basement that was, at one time, available as a fallout shelter.
