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Dedham Sears is closing

Dedham Sears going out of business

In what is possibly the least surprising store-closing news of the year, the Dedham Sears is shutting its doors forever as the chain continues to shrink into nothingness.

Alert Globe reader Gary C. noticed the ad (see below) in today's Globe, several months after Sears announced Massachusetts closings that did not include Dedham.

Employees said they were notified two days ago and that the last day could be sometime in July. As of today, all sales are final.

The store had been at the Dedham Mall since its opening in 1960 and survived the mall's transition from a traditional mall - complete with a Christmastime Santa - into a collection of big boxes.

In 2012, an escalator fan videoed his rides up and down the escalators in the store.

Today in Dedham:

Inside Dedham Sears

Still hiring?

Inside Dedham Sears

The Globe ad:

Inside Dedham Sears
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Comments

I knew it was coming, but I was still rooting for them. I actually shopped there a fair bit.

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Opening was not in 2016.

On one hand, inevitable but on the other hand they had some good stuff. Such an uninviting store though with a very weird layout.

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I think I read it was 1960.

The Historic Aerials website shows the space devoid of buildings in 1957.

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Stupidest mistake of the day (so far). Fixed.

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We forgive you!

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...of our mistakes be minor and as easy to fix.

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I shopped at the Sears in the Dedham Mall many times when I was younger. From the atrium of the Dedham Mall, Sears was an open inviting space. Clothes were right in front, with things like hardware in the back nearer to the warehouse pickup area. I sometimes used the back door to get into the parking lot, but not too often.
I went back more recently, decades after the last time I had set foot in the Dedham Mall. The layout and organization of the Sears was still the same except that the back door by the warehouse pickup became the front door. The whole store felt backwards and the walled over entrances to the mall still had aisles leading to them.
After trying to make a purchase of a small hardware item (it took 20 minutes of searching for someone to take my money) I never went back. I don't know if they ever renovated to make the store make sense, or at lease hide the fact that there used to be a mall attached to it.

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I don't know if they ever renovated to make the store make sense, or at lease hide the fact that there used to be a mall attached to it.

There was a long section that led to nothing that clearly used to be part of the mall.

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they used to be big.

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See what I did?

Sears sold off their Kenmore and Craftman brands which were the only valuable aspect of the company.

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I haven't heard about this.

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As far as I know, they didn't. Nowadays it's a Sears brand name that they slap on products that are made by companies like LG and Bosch.

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Whirlpool(old RCA appliance division) has always made most of the Sears Kenmore appliances. They have usually been quality and reliable products. Kenmore does contract out all of its appliance manufacture and does not disclose the maker of any model. You can usually figure it out by the layout of the appliance and comparison to online listings.

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It says they sold Craftsman in January, but not DieHard or Kenmore (so far).

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Sears is such a strange store. The layout isn't customer friendly- they group clothes by designer instead of by item. So if I want to browse shirts, I can't go to one place, I have to wander all over to look at everything.

It's also often surprisingly expensive for the quality you get. I don't mind paying more for clothes, but when I can get comparable quality for $20 less elsewhere... why would I go to Sears?

At the same time, I'm kind of worried that soon we'll only have online stores and cheap-o ones like H&M and Primark. Monopolies aren't customer friendly, either.

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It's also often surprisingly expensive for the quality you get. I don't mind paying more for clothes, but when I can get comparable quality for $20 less elsewhere... why would I go to Sears?

This is another way Sears screws itself. If you actually bring that expensive item to the checkout area they will ask for whatever they call the Sears points card. In other stores these points cards are generally worthless. At Sears, this came as a surprise to me, I was getting like 20-30% off.

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I thought grouping clothes by designer was fairly common these days, though I find it annoying as well.

I actually have had good luck with clothes shopping in Sears the last few years, and I will be very sad if the one at the Cambridgeside Galleria closes. There are fewer and fewer choices available at that price point for someone over 30.

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EMS on Comm Ave too. Not sure what the last day is but they are having a clearance sale.

Harvard Sq EMS closed abruptly a few months ago.

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And EMS, in an effort to retain their Harvard Sq customers, sent a $10 voucher to customers for the store that was closing. Umm, thanks?

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Is the bubble bursting?

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When I was a kid, a lot of my clothes came from the Sears catalog. In the 90s, my first online experiences were on Prodigy, co-owned by Sears. With that vision, they could've been where Amazon is today. Instead they focused on their boring stores, ditched the catalog, and they've been destroyed by Walmart, Target, and Amazon.

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Interesting. This is the first time I'm learning about the relationship between Sears and Prodigy. I remember back in the early or mid 90s Prodigy, along with AOL and Compuserv were pretty much how one access the internet. Now they're all shadows of their former selves, just like Sears.

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That was Sears, too, so they had everything they needed for online commerce - the product catalog, the payment system, the fulfillment system. And they couldn't get it together.

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I've been making this point about Sears for months now, since they announced they were closing stores.

Sears really could have been Amazon. Sears was the original catalog retailer. They already had logistics in place for such a service (something Amazon spent years perfecting). They also had a payment processor (Discover) and now.. which I didn't know.. owned Prodigy.

The problem was.. Sears management in the 1990s. Sears had a great streak in the 60s thru the 1980s. And they were coasting on that in the early 1990s. By 1993, Sears was tired of the catalog business (and was costing them big $ to keep alive). And the consumer base was dying out. Of course this was a 2-3 years before internet shopping became a big thing but still if they had hung on a few more years, and had some management with a keep on on this internet thing... they could have beat Amazon.

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20 years ago, this very store hired a senior citizen, an old lady in her 70s, as a sales associate in the sporting goods department. She made everybody unwelcome. She was VERY rude and didn't even want to interact with customers. When I approached her, she scuttles away to her "home base, aka the cashier's station. When I walk over to her there, she scuttles away again organizing shelves. Never understood her behavior of avoiding people when your job is the total opposite. It was NOT racial as both of us were white. I only conclude she was losing it mentally due to aging. I did complain to the store's management about her so I don't what became of her. I did tell her supervisor that I will never return to this store again because of her. And I never did. I assume today she's dead.

That is the legacy I remember about the Sears at Dedham Mall.

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Your therapy must have cost you a fortune over the years. Jeesh...

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Let it go...she's most likely dead, get over it!

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This is my favorite internet comment of the day! I'm awarding triple points here. One for hating a whole dying store because of one employee (who is also dead), a second point for nursing that rage for two decades, and then a bonus point for preemptively assuming we would all blame it on a racial difference. Glad to know it was just ageism. Plus you stuck the landing!

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... from a bunch of armchair psychologists.

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It's been 45 years since I stepped into a Sears. That's when they denied me credit after The Military set me free.
Except the for the workers uncertain future I DON'T CARE!!!!

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Sears gave me my first credit card when I was in college. I rarely used it, except to buy batteries, and then paid it off right away. That solid credit foundation paved the way for every credit purchase I have ever made, and for that I am grateful.

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My first credit card was also a sears, and I used it during college for auto accessories stuff. While still a student I worked in a mall that had a Sears Auto center and it was very convenient to get car maintenance while on my shift, pick up the car and drive home afterward, also using the Sears card.

But, they really have screwed up more recently, with crappy service as mentioned above. In recent years it has become impossible to buy something quickly there. If you did find a cashier you got the third degree about the god damn points card, just after hearing the same spiel to anyone ahead of you in line.

I miss the old sears, but not the current one.

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I likely have the opposite memory of that Sears as my oldest son. We moved from downtown Boston to JP when he was 10 and I visited, as he would say, too many times.

I'd pick him up after school and head there, or sometimes Home Depot. From 10 years in Manhattan and about 7 downtown here, I was not fully an "uncle," as in I didn't have the homeowners' tools, like drill, electric saw and such. We'd drive off to Sears and he'd lament, "Sears again!?" he'd rather watch cartoons or even do his homework instead.

I still have an use those Craftsman electric and hand tools.

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Somewhere the heirs of Mr Roebuck are smiling.

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Good riddance to plain incompetence

http://www.sears.com/search=bathrobe

That is not an isolated incident. Many searches for various producs on their website turn up ridiculous results (not to mention prices) and it has been that way for 20 years. I don't know what kind of money they make by inviting weird and pricey companies to list on their site but I can imagine it causing them to lose customers at an alarming rate.

http://www.sears.com/search=nintendo

http://www.sears.com/search=vcr

My basement is full of VHS and NES gold!!

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Are you talking about the vintage games? Working vintage cartridges, especially for games that had a smaller production run, have a collectors market. If you have old Nintendo games that are still working in good shape in your basement, you should consider selling them.

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Thanks to their century-plus of experience at mail order, they already had the order processing, warehousing, and distribution thing down. All they needed to do was to take their catalog and ordering process from print to online. Could have been huge. But they were slow to get into the space, and lost the market to other companies.

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In reality there was a gap between the heyday of the Sears catalog and the advent of Internet shopping. I think by the late 1980's, the catalog business was pretty much shot. By the time that people started really buying stuff online (late 1990's shall we say) Sear's infrastructure for ordering, warehousing, shipping etc was no longer really in place.

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I never shopped there but it was convenient to be able to return stuff there ordered from Lands End without paying a shipping fee.

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Back before large format LCD/LED HDTVs had become ubiquitous, I wanted to upgrade my home theater. So, I read up and found that Panasonic's Plasmas were some of the best TVs on the market at the time. I started price shopping and found that the Dedham Sears was having a sale on the exact Panasonic size and model that I wanted. The price was under $1400 (which was a steal at that time for a plasma).

I picked it up and took it home...and found out that it was an open-box return that nobody had vetted and just restocked. The manual had notes from someone organizing their purchases (evidently it was originally slated for someone's den), the batteries were in the remote, and the power cable was missing from the box.

I called them and brought it back in and traded it for an unopened box straight from the manufacturer and the TV still has a picture as good as the day after it was purchased.

You could buy great things from Sears for very good prices. Sometimes it just took you two or three tries.

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I guess TJ Maxx and Old Navy?

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And Lowe's.

But it's almost an irrelevant term in a mall where you have to go outside to walk from one end to the other.

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The only reason I will miss Sears is that it's the only store that has entries on both sides of the 'mall', so you can use it to cut through to the other side. When it closes, if you want to visit, say, Toys'R'Us and GameStop, you have to get back in your car and drive around to the other side - there aren't any sidewalks that go between the two sides and trying to walk is a nightmare.

That whole complex, including the other section with Stop & Shop, is a complete planning disaster.

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Not in every mall, but they are an actual department store.

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Just realized this thread is about Dedham. My point was that Nordstrom's is a dept store that seems to be doing well. Albeit elsewhere.

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The Bob Vila trading cards I purchased at Sears ironically in the 90's are gonna be worth a fortune!

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Only Bob Villa (Who bought new construction at the Heritage On The Garden in a touch of This Old House irony) will tell you that they are worth so much.

In a related story, someone with the name Bob Villa who kind of looked like someone named Bob Villa and may have kind of lived at the Heritage At The Garden always seemingly never had any cash on him when he used to come into buy ice cream off of me in the very early 90's. That person who may or not been then a noted then public television personality used to just smile and wave at me after being handed the ice cream and somehow his kids would have to show up an hour later with money after me saying, you know I don't give away this for free, either to you or the whores and pimps that used to hang out in Park Square.

In a related story screw Sears. They suck. They have for years. Their customer service is abhorrent and combatant to Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spice level of jerkery. I hope management ends up in miserable bankruptcy again.

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I think the Radio Shack closing at Fresh Pond is the least-surprising closing of the year.

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2 years ago I bought a patio set (6) chairs and a table plus an umbrella from the year end clearance sale 75%+ off. Since it was early fall I just put everything away in the garage and waited for spring to use the new patio set.
Spring comes along and I pulled stuff out of storage and started assembling the chairs, etc. and later noticed I didn't have a table! I called the store. Got the run around from different sale associates on the floor and finally was able to leave a message for the manager in receiving to give me call me back. I was losing my mind because I had a big BBQ planned the following day.
Miraculously, I get a call back and the gentleman says come on by, we have your table.
I was like NO WAY! Guess it was just tucked away and luckily didn't get sold off in some mismatched pcs. or leftover stock clearance sale. I'm still shocked it was there 8 months later.
Thinking into it, maybe it just goes to show how mismanaged the store was with crap everywhere and nobody really giving a damn. Those are the less memorable stories...shrugs

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In the 1970's there was a catalogue location in Portsmouth, NH. An airman friend of mine ordered a snowblower there from the catalogue and a few days later one was delivered to his house. Then a few days after that another snowblower was delivered to his house. He tried as hard as he could by phone and in person to return the second one but the system in place at the time couldn't do it. He gave it to another airman.

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As a floor worker at closed Kmart/Sears, maybe the person didn't know what components to load, I recall sets
Where there were separate boxes for tables, chairs, cushions and umbrella/stand.

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The Nashua, NH Sears store is exactly the same. They lost my ordered tiller for over a year at their satellite warehouse in Hudson, NH. The store manager at the Nashua store could care less and never returns calls. Their phone system usually does not work for any more the store hours info that is usually wrong! The Nashua store is certainly one that Sears should close due to incompetence!!!

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I bought a new driver a couple of years ago and when I think of appliances and tools, I think of Sears.

The guy that sold me the dryer seemed to know every single feature of every dryer and washer they had. No pressure sales on top of being very knowledgeable about his inventory.

I walked out so happy that I found a sales man like we used to have, that knew what they were selling and wanted a happy customer. It was a unique experience and I remember it really made my day .

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I've used this store as the place to pick up sockets and other small tools I've needed for years now but I guess all good things must come to an end. The most I've ever interacted with that store was setting foot into it as far as the order pickup area. I'm still getting Craftsman sockets primarily since I have a bunch of them already but I think it'll be time to find something more convenient now that the closest store is going to be in Natick.

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when I was a young lad I hung around with a kid named Jeffro. Jetffro had a bunch of cool older brothers and they were all in bands. One day one of Jeffro's brothers friends, Yanni, pulled up and asked all of us if we wanted to go see the Rolling Stones in concert? We all said yes and he said get in. the next thing i know I was on a highway going very fast. . I had never been on the highway in a car with someone I was not related to before and I was pretty scared. during the ride while Jeffro was telling me stories about how crazy yanni was Yanni explained to us that we were each going to purchase four tickets and give them right back to him. I was a bit confused about how this had me going to see the Rolling Stones ( The show was in Hartford! )?? but I was only like 12 so I just kept my mouth shut. The line for the tickets was up on the second floor of Sears and in the back by the service counters. Ticketmaster. There were about eight of us and we had 100 bucks each in our pockets and we waited intently as the line moved slowly. I had no idea what time it was or even what city I was in quite honestly and I was nervous about getting home when I heard people start to yell. We were about 10 people back from buying our tickets ( for Yanni) when they declared that it was sold out and there were no more tickets!!! People started going crazy. Bananas. throwing around furniture, mannequins, clothes, everything. we all made a mad dash for the escalator. I remember we got downstairs near the doors and Yanni was standing by the counter where you could buy nuts and candy he asked for a pound of cashews she handed him the bag and he ran out the door without paying. when we got outside Yanni took back our money and told us to wait by the door and he was going to get the car. I never saw Yanni again until about four years later. Had to call my parents and tell them I was in Dedham and they had to come pick up me and Jeffro, who I was not allowed to be hanging around with. Not cool. Didn't get to see the Rolling Stones until steel wheels tour in 89. Great show Dedham Sears.

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The line for the tickets was up on the second floor of Sears and in the back by the service counters. Ticketmaster.

IMAGE(http://seeklogo.com/images/T/Ticketron-logo-32E8DDB990-seeklogo.com.gif)

It was pretty nerve-wracking waiting in line behind people who were there to make layaway payments etc., and then when you finally got waited on you had to hope the clerk had any clue on how to work the Ticketron "electronic box office" (a Control Data terminal).

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Back in the day (50's, 60's etc. up until the 1980's, Sears was a great store. You could always be assured that their house brands, Craftsman, Kenmore, Die-Hard would be good quality. For years they had a 100% guarantee on Craftsman tools. If a tool broke, you brought it into the store and they simply replaced it.

My craftsman wrenches, screwdrivers and socket sets (with cases) all still work as well as the first day I bought them.

Yet, like a lot of companies they got bit by the cost-cutting bug - save money and cash in on the companies good name. Starting in the 1980's quality started to slide. Long time sales people no longer knew the products and over time were replaced by part-time cashiers.

Other than to buy a room air conditioner in a hurry, I haven't darkened a Sears in decades.

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I've also bought a lot of Craftsman tools over the years and they have been great - until now. I bought a large torque wrench last year and it just felt like a piece o' crap. It failed the first time I used it. They replaced it, but it's still crap.
I'm now looking for another line of tools.

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Where will you buy a washing machine or refrigerator that you can see in person first?

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Just down the road from Sears. Our washer and dryer are from there.

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No love for Harrison Refrigeration & Appliance, located in beautiful Roslindale Square, Adam?

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We've gotten every appliance we've needed to replace from them. ;-)

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when we needed a new fridge but they had like four models and zero interest in my business. Bought one at Sears. I assumed they got most of their business from landlords or something based on their total disinterest in a walk-in customer.

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... pleasant and helpful to us.

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We got our last washer at Home Depot after shopping around at Best Buy & Sears first.

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When we were young marrieds my husband had a Sears charge and we bought
Everything there. I rediscovered Sears when our kids moved near the store.
I love the points plan and have bought many nice clothes for my age without looking old henny or like a teenager at great prices.
I pray they don't close the Brockton store. I hate online shopping. It is mich better to try clothes on at a store.
Thanks, Sears. I wish you the best.

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I've a buddy who lives near that Sears and uses his finance degree to work their misbegotten points system. Seriously, two hand towels and a week later he'll have turned them into a 60" TV.

The store has had the stink of death about it for years. I don't believe it has seen a refresh this century. Shelves are sparse with a single row of goods lined up at their edge, or left empty. Even the lighting is miserable - it's like shopping in a dirty aquarium.

Staff runs the range from good to bad to mostly indifferent. Clearly nobody is there as a go-getter or planning to stay long or rise up. Turns out they were right.

We stopped by yesterday and aside from some closing signs it looks the same as always. Apparently that store is no longer participating in Sears promotions and all sales are final. The escalator is permanently broken, we had to go up a dingy staff staircase. Hopefully they there is a working elevator somewhere (wouldn't be surprised if not.)

According to my buddy the mall started out as a free-standing Sears, a Stop & Shop Market, and a Bradleys. Eventually they were filled in- between to create the mall. The decline started when Bradleys closed (long, slow, decline,) S&S moved to where Dicks is now then moved again to their current adjacent location.

Our guess is the mall has a new tenant lined up and agreed to cut Sears lose. It's a large space when you include the warehouse area. A Target is unlikely as there's a large new one in nearby Westwood. The other retailer of that scale would be Walmart. Their nearest is the comfortably distant Walpole hellhole of a Super Center.

Sic transit mediocrity.

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According to my buddy the mall started out as a free-standing Sears, a Stop & Shop Market, and a Bradle[e]s. Eventually they were filled in- between to create the mall. The decline started when Bradle[e]s closed (long, slow, decline,) S&S moved to where Dicks is now then moved again to their current adjacent location.

Your buddy is correct. Stop & Shop first moved from the mall proper to the Dick's location in the early '80s, then to its present position in the early '90s or so. Bradlees at the mall went out of business in 2001. Each store closed in rapid fashion until 2003, when Sears was rebuilt and the space that was to the left of it became Lowe's.

I went there today to check things out, and after a few minutes, I left. It was still neat and people got their bargains, but it wasn't the same - it had a forlorn feel. Hopefully the tenant that replaces it will have a better go at it.

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EMS in Northborough is closing too. One thing both Sears and EMS have in common is that they sell high quality work clothes for skilled and other manual labor and outdoor physical activities. What I call "tool" clothes, not ornamental. Manufactured for durability and protection.

Despite the contemporary benefits of robots and health clubs, there are serious losses and socioeconomic divisions; loss of employment opportunities, physical and mental well-being, and familiarity and stewardship of the environment.

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Would Work N' Gear be a good alternative? There's one in Dedham, and another in Shrewsbury (which is sort of near Northborough)

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In the 70s, the place was run by college students during the evenings and Saturdays. We had a blast working there and made lifelong friends along the way. It was a fun place to work at that time. Lost touch over the years but visited about 5 yrs ago. Store had an old tired feeling about it. Sad to see the store close. Happy memories from many years ago.

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