Retail Giant With Former Iowa Presence Has 3 Total Stores Left

This might be one that we can't blame on the pandemic. Their last Cedar Rapids store, on Collins Road Northeast, closed in 2013. The last two Iowa stores, Algona and Charles City turned out the lights, blue and otherwise, for good in 2019, according to KEYC. You might not believe it but the mighty K-Mart is now down to just three stores in the U.S. after Avenel, New Jersey will close on April 16.

When we were kids, there was sometimes a stigma to shopping for anything, but certainly our clothes, at K-Mart. It was a bargain-basement dream for our parents and as we got older we understood why. Target was more glamorous but Wal-Mart, while also offering quality inexpensive goods, kept becoming more chaotic.

According to Yahoo!, there were once over 2,000 K-Marts in the continental United States. Then Sears bought K-Mart in 2004 and what looked like a great partnership on paper for bargain-hunting shoppers ironically seemed to begin the decline of both stores. Sears Holdings went bankrupt in 2010. 24/7 Wall St. says that in its own right, Sears only had about 25 stores total remaining open as of December 2021. It could be even less than that by now. Sears, by the way, was my go-to for just about everything at one point. Kind of like what Amazon is now...

The Gazette says the store at Lindale Mall closed in 2018. It was a sad day. There was supposed to be a U-Haul facility going in. Whatever happened to that idea? Probably the same thing that became of the grandiose plans for Westdale.

The final remaining K-Mart stores are in Westwood, New Jersey; Bridgehampton, on New York’s Long Island, and, of all places, Miami.

There's a reason it's on its last legs, yet nostalgia is a very powerful thing.