Sears to close Polo Park store

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This article was published 30/09/2017 (2963 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Sears store in Polo Park is set to close, as the beleaguered retailer continues to shutter doors across Canada.

Sears Canada issued a news release Friday night, confirming it had signed “a number of” lease surrender or amendment agreements that would end with the closure of 11 more retail locations across the nation.

In Winnipeg, that means the longtime Polo Park anchor tenant will leave its 270,000-sq.-ft. spot in the months to come, though a closing date has not yet been confirmed. Its current lease was set to run until Oct. 2019.

There are 159 employees at the Polo Park store, most of whom are part time.

The lease surrender will require court approval. In an email, a spokesman for Sears Canada said the store will continue to operate until it enters liquidation mode, “the timing of which has not yet been decided.”

If the lease surrender is given the green light — Cadillac Fairview, which operates Polo Park, has agreed to the terms — it will likely follow the pace of previous closures, with a liquidation sale and closure to follow within a few months.

Sears has two other stores in Winnipeg, at Kildonan Place and St. Vital Centre. Those locations are not listed among the current round of closure documents.

Including the 159 Polo Park workers, approximately 1,200 employees will be affected by the latest closures.

With Friday’s announcement, Sears Canada has now moved to close a total of 70 stores this year, part of a bankruptcy and restructuring plan that will affect over 4,100 employees across the nation.

The first wave of closures came in June. Shortly after the company filed for creditor protection, it announced it would shutter 59 stores across Canada, including the Sears outlet centre in Garden City, at 2311 McPhillips Street.

On Thursday, Ontario-based RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust, which is the landlord for the rest of the Garden City Shopping Centre where the Sears outlet is situated, entered into a purchase agreement for that location.

As part of the deal, Sears can keep the store open until no later than Oct. 17, in order to finish the liquidation sale.

Over 2,900 employees lost their jobs in the first 59 closures. Since then, Sears’ treatment of laid-off employees has come under scrutiny, especially after it planned to pay a total $7.6 million in retention bonuses to top executives.

In August, Sears Canada said it would plan to seek court authorization to direct $500,000 of those planned bonuses into an employee hardship fund.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca