Sears' Last SoCal Stores To Close, Ending An Era: Report

BURBANK, CA — The Sears store in Burbank is closing, marking the end of the 139-year-old company's presence in Southern California, according to a report.

The general manager of the Burbank Town Center mall, where the Sears is located, confirmed to the Press-Enterprise that the department store would close.

There's no timeline for when exactly the location will close or what might replace it as an anchor tenant at Burbank Town Center.

Sears is down to just eight locations across the country. That includes the Burbank store and one in Whittier, which is set to close by the end of the month, the Whittier Daily News reported.

There's just one other Sears store in California, in Concord in the Bay Area.

Once a retail giant, Sears built up an empire as a mail order business in the 1880s. Its catalogue became a ubiquitous source of everything from household appliances to houses themselves for Americans.

The company began opening retail stores in 1925. It grew to be the country's largest retailer by the 1980s. In recent decades, its stores began dying out — along with the malls that contained them — amid competition from e-commerce and department stores like Walmart and Target.