WhereIsAtlas · Kmart
What Happened to Kmart?
Kmart once ran 2,486 stores and invented the Blue Light Special. It is still trading — out of three shops, two of them on islands.
Kmart is still in business, with three stores: Tutu Park Mall on St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, Tamuning on Guam, and a smaller store in Kendale Lakes, Florida. Two more US Virgin Islands stores closed in 2025, and the last full-size Kmart in the continental United States, in Bridgehampton, New York, closed on 20 October 2024. Kmart's parent, Transformco, has described its own direction as moving from retailing with real estate to being a real estate operating company.
The answer is three
Kmart is not closed. As of 2026 there are three Kmart locations: a big-box department store at Tutu Park Mall in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands; a big-box store in Tamuning, Guam; and a smaller store in Kendale Lakes, in the Miami area of Florida [1].
That is the whole chain. The last full-size Kmart in the continental United States, in Bridgehampton, New York, closed on 20 October 2024 [1][5][6]. The Miami store had already shrunk into its own garden-centre space in March 2023, with the rest of the building leased to At Home, and it survives as the smaller format that keeps a Kmart on the mainland [1][7][8].
From five-and-dime to the second-biggest retailer in America
Kmart's corporate ancestor was a five-and-dime. Sebastian S. Kresge invested US$6,700 saved from a travelling-salesman job into a Memphis store in 1897, in partnership with John G. McCrory, and the S.S. Kresge Company was incorporated in Delaware in 1912 with 85 stores [1].
The first Kmart-branded store — a 27,000-square-foot "bantam" Kmart — opened on 25 January 1962 in San Fernando, California, roughly six months before the first Walmart. The first full-size Kmart, at 80,000 square feet, opened on 1 March 1962 in Garden City, Michigan, and seventeen more opened that year [1]. The company renamed itself K Mart Corporation in 1977 [1].
The Blue Light Special is the detail that outlived everything else: a rotating blue light, a public-address announcement beginning "Attention, Kmart shoppers", and a short-lived discount on whatever was under the light [1]. It entered the language and stayed there.
At its peak in 1994 Kmart operated 2,486 stores worldwide [1]. Until November 1990 it was the second-largest retailer in the United States, behind Sears [1].
Two bankruptcies and a merger
Kmart filed for Chapter 11 in 2002 and emerged in May 2003 [1]. In November 2004 Kmart Holding Corporation announced it would buy Sears, Roebuck and Co.; the merger closed on 24 March 2005, creating Sears Holdings Corporation, with both Kmart and Sears operating as subsidiaries of the new company, which had roughly 3,500 stores at the time [1][2].
Eddie Lampert, whose ESL Investments was the controlling shareholder, ran the combined company for the next thirteen years [2]. Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 on 15 October 2018, the same day a US$134 million debt payment fell due [2]. On 15 October it announced 142 store closures, including 63 Kmarts; further rounds followed in November and December [2].
The endgame produced the company that exists today. In February 2019 Transform SR Brands LLC — Transformco — acquired 425 stores, 223 Sears and 202 Kmart, from Sears Holdings for US$5.2 billion. Stores not bought were liquidated immediately [2]. In December 2019 Transformco sold the DieHard brand to Advance Auto Parts for US$200 million, keeping the right to sell DieHard products in Sears and Kmart stores [2]. By February 2020, after the closures announced the previous November, 70 Kmarts remained across 19 states plus Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands [2].
What Transformco says it is now
Transformco's own framing is not that of a retailer. In a June 2023 interview, the company's president for real estate, Scott Carr, described Transformco as "transitioning from being a retailer with real estate to becoming a real estate operating company" [2].
That is consistent with how the former stores have been reused. Across the mainland, ex-Kmart buildings have become supermarkets, gyms and housing developments [3]. In the US Virgin Islands the question for the surviving store is a lease question, not a trading one [3].
Three stores, three different countries
The three survivors sit in three different jurisdictions, which is part of why they have lasted.
Tutu Park Mall, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. Kmart once had three stores in the territory. The Sunshine Mall store in Frederiksted, St. Croix, closed in 2023, ending a 30-year run on that island [3]. The Sunny Isle store on St. Croix closed in the first week of July 2025 — roughly a month earlier than staff expected — after a lease non-renewal recorded in a WARN notice dated 9 May 2025 that covered 96 employees [3]. The Lockhart Gardens store on St. Thomas began its liquidation in early July 2025 and closed on 16 August 2025 [3][4]. Tutu Park, the largest store at its mall, was listed by Transformco as an "Operating Store" and had no WARN notice or closure announcement against it; it is now the territory's last Kmart [3].
Tamuning, Guam. A big-box Kmart in a US territory in the western Pacific, and one of the three locations still listed.
Kendale Lakes, Florida. The smaller Miami-area store, reduced in 2023 to its garden-centre footprint [1][7].
What to be careful about
The remaining-store count moves, and it moves quietly — a lease non-renewal or a redevelopment proposal is enough to end one. There is no announced closure programme for the three survivors, but there is also no growth plan, and no 2026 news reporting beyond the store list itself. Anyone checking should treat "three, as of 2026" as a snapshot rather than a promise [1][3].
It is also worth separating the brand from the buildings. Kmart and Sears still share a parent, and that parent now describes itself as a real estate company; the stores that remain are the part of the retail business that has not yet been converted into something else [2].
What Kmart is an example of
Kmart is the slowest version of the American retail collapse. It had two bankruptcies eighteen years apart, a merger that bought time rather than fixing anything, and a final decade in which the number of stores fell from 202 to three while the company's public statements were about property.
The Blue Light Special finished. The light is still on in three places.
Entries in this story
Sources
- Kmart — Wikipedia (2026-09-20) ↩
- Transformco — Wikipedia (2026-09-20) ↩
- With Sunny Isle Closed and Lockhart Gardens Set to Follow, Tutu Park Stands as Kmart's Final Holdout in USVI — The Virgin Islands Consortium (2026-09-20) ↩
- Kmart Shuttering Lockhart Gardens Store Aug. 16 — St. Thomas Source (2026-09-20) ↩
- Attention Kmart shoppers: The last full-size Kmart in the mainland United States is closing — CNN Business (2026-09-20) ↩
- Kmart's blue light fades to black with the shuttering of its last full-scale US store — AP News (2026-09-20) ↩
- Kendall Kmart soon to be last store in mainland United States — WPLG Local 10 (2026-09-20) ↩
- Miami Kmart is Now the Last Store in U.S. Mainland. Behold! — Miami New Times (2026-09-20) ↩