Sears will move to the Flinthills Mall this September, taking up the southeast part of the old Food 4 Less grocery store.
When Sears moves in, it will be the first time that space has been occupied since 2001. The move is planned for Sept. 1 or 2.
“It’s a bigger and better location,” said Sears manager Mark Stockman. “We’ve been here (under new ownership) for two years and we still get people calling and saying ‘We didn’t even know you were here.’ So we’re hoping to get a little better exposure.”
Sears has been in the Sunset Plaza strip mall, 2914 W. U.S. Highway 50, since 1993 after spending about 30 years on Commercial Street. The store was purchased by SD Enterprises of Newton in 2005.
The new store will face south toward 15th Avenue and will have 10,361 square feet of space, including 7,349 square feet for the sales floor. It also has something even more valuable for the appliance dealer — a loading dock.
“Right now, we unload our trucks by hand,” Stockman said. “There, we’ll have an actual dock. We’ll be able to help our customers quickly. It’s going to all around be a better place for us, we believe.”
The rest of the 48,000 square-foot space in the mall will remain unfinished. As far back as 2002, the mall has hoped to carve the space up between multiple new stores.
“Obviously, this fills a vacant space for us,” mall manager Misti Hampton said. “We had what they needed and they draw a good crowd of people in.”
Hampton said the mall was in preliminary talks with another business interested in the southwest quarter of the building.
Plans for the new store are on file with the city. Code services chief Martin Peres said he expected to issue a construction permit soon.
With the new space will come a few new brands in the Sears store’s existing lines such as appliances and lawn and garden equipment. There are no plans at this time to add new product lines, such as clothing.
The move was originally supposed to happen in June, Stockman said, but it took time to find the right contractor and work through all the standards Sears requires for a new store.
“It was supposed to happen in June, then July, then August,” Stockman said.
The current Sears has about 9,000 square feet, including about 6,000 square feet of showroom space. The store has six full-time employees, not including the manager.
The new address will be 2712 W. 15th Ave.
sciguy (anonymous) says...
With luck, over time, this Sears store could expand to offer more product lines.
A relatively full-service Sears would be a good second anchor store for the mall.
July 19, 2007 at 11:29 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )