Fourteen of Georgia's 70 Kmart stores will closed as part of the company's bankruptcy restructuring, putting more than 1,100 people out of work, Kmart officials said Friday.
Ten of the stores are in the metro Atlanta area. The others are in Brunswick, Hinesville, LaFayette and Perry. The closed stores will lay off 1,125 employees, with about 810 in metro Atlanta.
Nationally, Kmart will close 271 discount stores and 12 Kmart Supercenters, plus one store in Puerto Rico. About 22,000 jobs will be cut just under 9 percent of Kmart's work force of about 250,000.
``It'll be the third (Kmart) store that I've worked at in 10 years that has closed,'' said Linda Muhammad, an Atlanta Kmart employee.
Bankruptcy and lease experts say the store closings will be ``devastating'' for the smaller stores that share a strip mall with a soon-to-be dark Kmart.
``The other tenants are concerned about viability. They depend on Kmart for foot traffic,'' said Martin Zohn, with Proskauer Rose LLP.
Kmart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Jan. 22, following lower-than-expected holiday sales, downgrades by several credit rating agencies and a stock dive.
The Georgia stores closing are in Atlanta, Austell, Brunswick, Conyers, Decatur, Hinesville, Kennesaw, Lafayette, Lawrenceville, Marietta, Perry, Smyrna, Roswell and Stockbridge.
Thursday
April 3rd, 2025
8:26PM
