The Sears store at the Sunvalley Shopping Center in Concord is about to be the last one standing in the state of California — an ignoble distinction for the iconic American retailer, considering many local shoppers thought it already was closed.
Just look at the parking lot.
Positioned at the prime corner of Contra Costa Boulevard and Willow Pass Road right off Interstate 680, the vast lot is mostly empty. The store itself had so few customers on a summer day this past week it practically echoed. The clerk behind the watch repair counter on the basement floor looked like a Maytag repairman from the old commercials — the loneliest guy in town.
A customer looks over home appliances for sale at the last remaining Sears store in the state at the Sunvalley Shopping Center on Tuesday, July 29, 2025, in Concord, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
“It’s long past sad. It’s like, let’s move on. Just close the place down,” said Bob Goldner, a volunteer at the Friends Book Store across the street. “Half the people around here don’t even know it’s open.”
The parent company’s website already suggests the Sears property is available for lease. An online brochure advertises its “prime East Bay location” and its “large-scale redevelopment opportunity.”
In this photo provided by Sears, Roebuck and Co., crowds gather for the grand opening of the Sears store on Chicago’s State St. in 1932. Sears was once the store of choice for most Americans with its famed “Big Book Catalogue” and large retail presence. (AP Photo/Sears Roebuck and Co.)
News this week of the pending closure of the Sears store in Burbank, along with the closure of the Whittier store last weekend, leaves the Concord store the Golden State’s last vestige of a once venerable brand. Founded in Chicago in 1893, it was a pioneer in mail-order shopping with its revered catalog, it’s Christmas edition a wish book for every child. At its peak in the early 1970s, Sears was the largest American retailer and by 2005 operated more than 3,500 stores. When the last Southern California store shutters for good, only five across the country, including Concord, will remain. And some of those already are up for sale, including the store in Orlando, Fla.
Like former retail giant Kmart that closed its last store in October, Sears’ failure to innovate as customers embraced online shopping and gravitated to big box stores like Costco and Home Depot led to its long, slow decline. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2018.
So how much longer will the Sears in Concord survive? And what does that mean for the future of the financially-strapped Sunvalley mall, still anchored by Macy’s and JCPenney, which have financial problems of their own?
“It looks like your classic Zombie Apocalypse mall,” said commercial real estate broker John Cumbelich, who grew up in Concord and remembers the day the mall opened in August 1967. He was barely 3, but he can still envision the dozens of huge balloons that floated to the ceiling of the mall’s central court. Sears was the first major retailer to open there.
Now, he said, “you’ve got this hulking, vintage 1960s ghostly box sitting there. So it gives the mall a real morgue-ish feel.”
Merchandise for sale at the last remaining Sears store in the state at the Sunvalley Shopping Center on Tuesday, July 29, 2025, in Concord, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
Walking through the main entrance of the store at lunchtime last week, clothing was neatly displayed on sale racks. But you could scan the entire main floor without seeing a single customer. On the basement level, where many appliances still remain in their cardboard boxes, clerks outnumbered customers three to one. This is the place that used to have a bustling photo studio, an optical department and a tuxedo shop. Now, the basement entrance from the mall is permanently closed and on Tuesday, one of the interior escalators was broken.
Over the course of the afternoon, however, customers filtered in, including a few moms shopping for back-to-school clothes and a couple at the jewelry counter plastered with 75% off signs.
Brad Reichenberg and his wife, Jona Sweet, purchased a cubic zirconia ring for $50, on sale from the original $200, for their wedding anniversary. Reichenberg has always liked Sears.
“It’s no frills. Everything is there that I want,” he said. “I got Levi’s and jewelry that’s good quality at the right price.”
Like Kmart, which became ingrained in American culture with its “blue light specials,” Sears Roebuck once was famous for its catalogs advertising ready-to-assemble house kits, and “you’d never think that it would go away,” Reichenberg said.
Customers buy a ring at the jewelry counter of the last remaining Sears store in the state at the Sunvalley Shopping Center on Tuesday, July 29, 2025, in Concord, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
Gisela Fink, 95, who settled in Concord with her husband in 1955, remembers when the land was a tomato farm. She has shopped here for the store’s entire 58-year history and on Tuesday purchased a floral blouse to go with palazzo pants she purchased here some time ago.
“There are more people in here now than at Christmas time,” said Fink, holding onto her walker and scanning the store. “They had good sales on and everything.”
Once this Sears closes, whenever that may be, its replacement is far from certain. Sears’ parent company, Transformco, did not return messages to discuss its availability. It’s prime location — which likely helped it remain open so long — could be attractive to other tenants.
But if the Sears store at Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton that closed in 2019 is any indication, its fate could linger unresolved for years. Despite years of redevelopment plans that call for its demolition and replacement with a movie theater, fitness facility, grocery store and other shops, the enormous store remains empty. Housing is also being discussed for the Stoneridge mall property.
A closed entrance of the last remaining Sears store in the state at the Sunvalley Shopping Center on Tuesday, July 29, 2025, in Concord, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
Because malls tend to have numerous owners — Sears, Macy’s and JCPenney all own the land their stores sit on at Sunvalley — changes require everyone to agree and are often “a quagmire” and “fraught with delays,” Cumberlich said. Simon Property Group, parent company of Sunvalley mall owner Taubman Company, reportedly experiencing financial troubles, didn’t answer questions about the mall’s future.
Nonetheless, if and when the time comes for the last Sears in California to close, Cumbelich wants to be there on it’s final day. The place with the big blue Sears sign outside remains etched in his brain — and on his forehead.
“I’ve got this memory as a child being there the day they opened,” he said. He was so keyed up after all the balloons and festivities that when he got home, he ran into a wall and needed stitches.
“To this day, when I look in the mirror, I see that little scar on my forehead and I remember the day Sunvalley Mall opened,” he said. “I guess I need to be there at the last day too, so I can say that I saw the whole life cycle.”