A portion of a shopping mall in northeast Raleigh has sold for $5.85 million, according to Wake County deed records.
The Sears location at Triangle Town Center off Capital Boulevard south of Interstate 540 has been purchased by Chapel Hill-based Blue Empire LLC, according to the records.
The seller is TR Raleigh NC LLC, an affiliate of Transformco, based in Illinois, which owns Sears, Kmart and other retail concepts and brands. JLL Carolinas represented the seller in the transaction.
In recent months, Transformco has closed or sold several stores throughout the country as the pandemic took a toll on the already struggling brands.
Blue Empire LLC is registered to a residential address in Chapel Hill, and the registered agent is David Tsui. In 2016, Blue Empire acquired the Burlington Outlet Village shopping center off of Interstate 40/85 in Burlington.
The two-story, nearly 144,000-square-foot Sears store currently open at Triangle Town Center was built in 2001 and covers more than 12 acres. The total assessed value of the land and building is nearly $8.7 million.
Transformco, led by former Sears Holdings Corp. CEO Edward Lampert, bought the remaining Sears and Kmart stores out in February 2019 after Sears filed for bankruptcy in October 2018. The bankruptcy came with the announcement that 142 stores from both brands were not profitable and would be shuttered across the U.S.
In recent years, the Triangle has lost several Sears stores, including the location that served as an anchor tenant at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh for 24 years before it closed in October 2018. In March 2019, the Sears store at Northgate Mall in Durham shut down. The store at Cary Towne Center on Walnut Street closed its doors in January 2015.