Sears Closing Four More New York State Stores

A parking lot on the east side of the Sears store at the Oakdale Mall. [Bob Joseph/WNBF News][/caption]The bad news continues for big retail outlets in New York state with Sears announcing another wave of closings following dismal sales during the holiday season.

Four more Sears stores in the state will be shut down by the end of March. Locations in Middletown, Cheektowaga, Amherst and Queens were included on the list released on Thursday afternoon.

The Sears Oakdale Mall store in Johnson City escaped the new round of cost-cutting.

The long-term prospects for the Broome County store are uncertain. Business appeared to be slow late Thursday with about a dozen cars in the store's east parking lot around 4:30 p.m.

Sears Holdings has been closing hundreds of its Sears and Kmart stores in recent years in an effort to end the company's ongoing losses.

Broome County's last Kmart store closed about three weeks ago. The Binghamton Plaza store had nearly 70 employees. The company did not disclose how many of those workers found jobs at other Kmart or Sears stores.

Macy's on Wednesday announced it would close its Oakdale Mall store, which has 58 employees.

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