Business closures impact rural town revenue

SIDNEY LOWRY Managing Editor | @sidney_lowry

The end of December, for most, means celebrating the holidays and bringing in the new year. For one store in Maryville, it also included their closure announcement. Following Sears Hometown Stores Inc. declaration of bankruptcy in December 2022, the Maryville location is the final store of its kind in the region.

Though the store in Maryville will be shutting down, it isn’t the only town where this will happen. There will be 115 Sears Hometown Store closures nationwide, with three shutdowns in Missouri, three in Iowa and four in Nebraska.

Executive Director of Nod- away County Economic Development Josh McKim said this trend was seen before COVID, but the process sped up as inperson shopping came to a halt and had to move online.

“We were seeing a trend of more online shopping, but also people wanted their shopping to be an experience,” McKim said. “So it seemed, as an outsider looking in, it seemed that there were some strengths in businesses that could provide an experience.”

During the first year of COVID, there were roughly 200,000 permanent business closures across the nation, according to a study done through the Finance and Economics Discussion Series at the Federal Reserve.