Moses Lake Sears Hometown location closing
CHARLES H. FEATHERSTONE | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 2 years, 8 months AGO
The Sears Hometown store in downtown Moses Lake at 312 S. Divsion Street is closing.
COURTESY PHOTO/GOOGLE
MOSES LAKE — The Sears Hometown outlet in downtown Moses Lake is closing its doors, and everything in stock is discounted as part of a “blowout sale,” with large appliances all 25% off, according to postings on the outlet’s Facebook page.
Store manager Elizabeth Davis said she could not comment publicly on the closure, but noted the closure will not affect repairs and maintenance on the brands sold.
“We don’t handle that,” she said.
Sears Hometown is currently owned by Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based Transformco, which bought Sears in 2018 for $5.2 billion after Sears filed for bankruptcy. In mid-2019, Transformco purchased former independent companies Sears Hometown and Sears Outlet, though the company had to divest itself of all the Sears Outlet stores as part of the deal.
Transformco, which also owns nearly defunct discount retailer Kmart, has continued to close Sears stores and announced in December 2021 that the company would sell its corporate headquarters in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates, according to a report from ABC News.
Representatives with Transformco did not respond to email requests for comment, and calls to the company’s main phone number listed on its website for media inquiries were forwarded to what appears to be an unattended voicemail box that does not take incoming messages.
The last press release posted on the Transformco website was on Jan. 21, when the company announced it was closing a Sears store in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. The last blog entry on the Transformco website was on July 21, 2021, and the company made its most recent official Twitter post at @TransformcoHQ on June 30, 2021.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.
MORE STORIES
ARTICLES BY CHARLES H. FEATHERSTONE
Potato prices up, sales down for first quarter 2023
DENVER — The value of grocery store potato sales rose 16% during the first three months of 2023 as the total volume of sales fell by 4.4%, according to a press release from PotatoesUSA, the national marketing board representing U.S. potato growers. The dollar value of all categories of U.S. potato products for the first quarter of 2023 was $4.2 billion, up from $3.6 billion for the first three months of 2022. However, the total volume of potato sales fell to 1.77 billion pounds in the first quarter of 2023 compared with 1.85 billion pounds during the same period of 2022, the press release noted. However, total grocery store potato sales for the first quarter of 2023 are still above the 1.74 billion pounds sold during the first three months of 2019 – a year before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the press release said.
WSU Lind Dryland Research Station welcomes new director
LIND — Washington State University soil scientist and wheat breeder Mike Pumphrey was a bit dejected as he stood in front of some thin test squares of stunted, somewhat scraggly spring wheat at the university’s Lind Dryland Research Station. “As you can see, the spring wheat is having a pretty tough go of it this year,” he said. “It’s a little discouraging to stand in front of plots that are going to yield maybe about seven bushels per acre. Or something like that.” Barely two inches of rain have fallen at the station since the beginning of March, according to station records. Pumphrey, speaking to a crowd of wheat farmers, researchers, seed company representatives and students during the Lind Dryland Research Station’s annual field day on Thursday, June 15, said years like 2023 are a reminder that dryland farming is a gamble.
Wilson Creek hosts bluegrass gathering
WILSON CREEK — Bluegrass in the Park is set to start today at Wilson Creek City Park. The inaugural event is set to bring music and visitors to one of Grant County’s smallest towns. “I've been listening to bluegrass my whole life,” said the event’s organizer Shirley Billings, whose family band plays on their porch every year for the crowd at the Little Big Show. “My whole family plays bluegrass. And I just wanted to kind of get something for the community going. So I just invited all the people that I know and they’ll come and camp and jam.” ...