Who remembers when Cheyenne had a full-line Sears? It seems Sears is making a comeback to Cheyenne as a Hometown store, set to open in the Cheyenne Plaza!
History of Sears in Cheyenne
For those unfamiliar, Cheyenne's original Sears department store started in the space now occupied by 2 Doors Down, a local dine-in restaurant still thriving today in Downtown Cheyenne.
At the turn of the 1980s, Sears relocated to the Frontier Mall that opened in 1981, Sears apparently opening before the mall did according to numerous locals who were around at the time.
Unfortunately, that Sears announced it would liquidate toward the end of 2017, closing in January 2018, less than a year after Cheyenne's last Kmart closed.
The department store side of Sears has slowly been deteriorating, with founder Eddie Lampert closing hundreds of both Sears and Kmart stores over the last few years. On the contrary, it would seem the franchised Sears Hometown stores, a subsidiary of TransformCo since 2019, is thriving and not going anywhere anytime soon!
Sears Hometown and some background of its new space
On December 1st, 101.9 KING shared a post showing the brand new Sears sign being added to the front of one of the facades in the Cheyenne Plaza, specifically the one partially used by Absolute Flooring. As of the day of taking the Sears Hometown photos featured in this post (Dec 5th), Sears Hometown is beginning to stock the inside with various home appliances, one of the numerous products Sears Hometowns typically offer to communities besides tools and seasonal products.
According to some other Cheyenne locals, this entire space (both the Sears Hometown tenant and the Absolute Flooring tenant) was occupied by Staple's Office Supply many, many years ago. At the moment, it's not quite clear what tenant(s), if any, occupied this space before and after Staple's, and also before Absolute Flooring--a local flooring store established in 2011 according to their website.
The new Sears Hometown space was most recently used as a recruitment center for the Walmart Super Center that opened in August 2015 on Livingston Avenue (off of I-80). It has been vacant since that period, as seen in the below photo from the earliest official abandoned retail video on Optopolis which was filmed in 2019.
At this time, it isn't known exactly when this Sears Hometown store will open to the public, but seeing products are already being stocked, it likely will not be long. Signs in the window indicate they are also currently hiring workers for the new store.
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