Dick’s Sporting Goods plans to move into the former Sears at Westmoreland Mall, according to the company that controls the property.
The Findlay-based sporting goods chain already has a store behind the mall in Hempfield. Dick’s hasn’t responded to requests seeking comment about the move.
Transformco Properties, a Chicago-area company that owns the properties once held by Sears and Kmart, stated on its website that it signed a lease with Dick’s for use of the 200,070-square-foot space on two floors at the western end of the mall. The deal was closed Tuesday, according to the company’s website. Terms of the lease were not revealed.
Transformco also did not respond to requests for further comment.
Atlantic Retail, a Boston-based real estate brokerage firm, was offering the property for lease. In a listing on its website, it touted how more than 98,000 people live within a 15-minute drive and the median household income was $56,630, according to 2020 demographics.
Stacey Keating, a spokesperson for CBL Properties of Chattanooga, Tenn., which owns Westmoreland Mall and the land, declined to comment on the property.
Dick’s would be moving into a retail space that once was one of the four anchor stores at the mall along Route 30 east of Greensburg, when it opened in the mid-1970s. The store was one of hundreds of casualties of Sears Holding Co.’s bankruptcy in October 2018 in what turned out to be a futile attempt to stay afloat and reorganize its finances. Transformco announced in February 2019 it was buying Sears Holding’s assets, and the mall store closed in March 2019.
The space at the former Sears store is far greater than Dick’s store at the Westmoreland Crossing shopping strip at the mall property, which has 51,000 square feet, according to the lease Dick’s signed with CBL/Westmoreland in August 2004.
Dick’s is a powerhouse in the sporting goods and outdoors retail market. It generated $12.4 billion in sales in 2022 and will reveal its 2023 annual revenue on March 14.
Dick’s has 853 locations, 49 of which are in Pennsylvania, including one at Hempfield Pointe Plaza along Route 30, about 4 miles west of Greensburg.
Dick’s said in its presentation to analysts in November that it plans to add 10 more interactive sporting goods stores, what it calls its House of Sports, in 2024. It had 12 House of Sports stores, according to its November presentation. The company did not specify in November where it would open the additional House of Sports stores.
The House of Sports stores have a climbing wall, multiple golf driving bays with tracking simulators, and multi-sport cages that can be used for baseball, softball, lacrosse and soccer, Dick’s said. Those features allows a customer to try a product while measuring and tracking their performance.