East Coast Retail: Sears #1318 Bakersfield, CA Closing

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Sears #1318 Bakersfield, CA Closing

This Sears location is set to close in December 2018/January 2019. It was announced with the other 141 locations that Sears is closing as part of their bankruptcy filing in October 2018. This location is located in The Valley Plaza which is Bakersfield's only mall after the East Hills Mall closed. This Sears opened with the mall in 1967 and has two floors even though the mall itself is only a single floor. The Auto Center that was located nearby in the parking lot was closed and demolished in 2016. Also in 2016 the Sears store underwent a downsizing in which it lost about 24,000 sf of space that became an H&M clothing store that also took the Sears mall entrance. So now you can't get to the mall from inside the Sears or to the Sears from inside the mall. Even with the downsizing this Sears store is still huge and still has two floors of retail space. As you can see no closing sign outside as of yet...

Lets go inside and look around...

Woman's clothing on the right and shoes on the left

More clothing and shoes

The best deal in the whole store...

This store has two sets of escalators and all of my photos of them are blurry but this is the best one of them. This store also has a elevator

Store directory located near the elevator heading to the basement to the rest of the store

Mattress and big furniture downstairs

Lets head inside the mall to see where the old Sears mall entrance was...

The mall entrance and about 24,000 sf of space is now home to H&M

This is what it looked like in 2015...

The mall has this sign up directing you outside to get to the Sears

Lets look at what the Sears Auto Center looked like before it was demolished in 2016 and this is now home to Texas Roadhouse and Blaze Pizza...

This Sears also still has a old time key maker in the parking lot!

Lets take a look at the outside a few more times...

Looks like when the store underwent the downsizing they swapped out the logos as well. This mall is very busy and doesn't have very many vacant stores so I'm hopeful that the mall's owners can find a replacement for this store soon. I hope to make it back to this store before it closes forever but I can't make any promises!