Kmart Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday, and the load on John Duval's shoulder offered one reason why.
Duval, a Clinton farmer and devoted Kmart shopper, stopped by the company's Lawrence store to pick up some Pedigree dog food on sale, but he left with two bags of Dog Chow instead.
"It's a good place, but they need to keep stuff on the shelves," Duval said, lugging two 27.5-pound bags into the parking lot at 3106 Iowa. "Wal-Mart has two things: They have people in the aisles for customer service, and they restock the shelves. If Kmart does those two things, they're in the game."
Kmart's fate is a high-stakes contest in Lawrence, where the company is among the city's five largest private employers.
Kmart's store anchors the Pine Ridge Plaza shopping center, which includes Old Navy, Kohl's and a handful of new shops. Kmart is located near its two main corporate competitors: a Wal-Mart store to the south and a SuperTarget to the southwest.
Lawrence also is home to a Kmart Distribution Center, a sprawling complex covering 1.3 million square feet at 2400 Kresge Road, northwest of North Iowa Street and the Kansas Turnpike.
The distribution center, opened 30 years ago, has about 650 employees who work to supply 110 stores in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa. It also ships "specialty" merchandise to other Kmart centers for later dispersal to all of Kmart's stores in North America.
After working at a breakneck pace in the fall and into the Christmas holiday, Kmart since has throttled back on activity in Lawrence. Line employees are working only three days a week, while some are on scheduled layoffs until Feb. 1.
Tuesday's bankruptcy filing left some employees wondering what would become of the company and what effect the upcoming reorganization would have on the Lawrence center.
"It depends on how many stores they close," said Michael Gebhards, who handles data processing at the center. "It's a long ways down the road before anything becomes final."
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.