When Macy's closed in March, a scaled-down Sears appliance store was left as the lone original tenant of the old Foothills Fashion Mall.

Although it was no longer an anchor tenant and the 10,000-square-foot store was a fraction of its original size, it retained a key place in the shopping center's long history in Midtown Fort Collins.

Now it, too, will close, 50 years after opening, the victim of changing consumer habits and a chain that had long been on the demise. Going-out-of-business sales started May 11, and the store will close June 18, according to a store employee.

Sears Holdings, which owned Kmart and Sears, closed its Fort Collins Kmart in 2016, filed for bankruptcy in 2018 and barely avoided liquidation a year later. Sears Holdings investor and CEO Eddie Lampert purchased the stores and kept them going under the name Transformco. The company began closing more stores within two years.

On Thursday, the Fort Collins store at 3400 S. College Ave. still had supplies of washers, dryers, stoves, air conditioners, ovens, some mattresses and hand tools. Signs on the store window advertised 25% to 40% off.

According to a recent job posting by Transformco, the Fort Collins store is looking for temporary workers to assist the store team through the liquidation process.

The job opening for "temp store support team" was posted on May 10 and lists a $15 hourly wage. Included in the duties, the support team assists with "breakdown and removal of store fixtures, signage, trash and recycling, among other duties."

More closures: Going-out-of-business sales underway at Bed Bath & Beyond in Fort Collins

For Sears — which was the largest retailer in the nation before the rise of Walmart and, later, Amazon — bankruptcy marked the culmination of years of decline defined by store closures, sales declines, cost cuts and borrowing.

Its history in Fort Collins included morphing from a large department store at Foothills Mall to a 10,000-square-foot store specializing in appliances as part of the previous Foothills renovation. Its future in Fort Collins was in doubt for about two years after it left the enclosed mall.

As part of negotiations to move Sears from its anchor location, then-mall owner Alberta Development Partners built the smaller store for Sears, but it sat vacant for more than a year while Sears decided its next move.

Sears Appliance opened there in 2016.

The company faced the same challenges upending an industry in which traditional retailers struggled to compete with online giant Amazon, along with powerful big-box rivals like Walmart and specialized store chains like TJ Maxx that offer similar merchandise but at lower prices or with a more unique shopping experience.

More closures: Ten Thousand Villages in Fort Collins will close after fundraising effort falls short

At one time, Sears was the one-stop retail destination for American shoppers, with families eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Sears catalog in their mailboxes. First printed in 1888, the catalog was a staple in American households, enabling shoppers to furnish an entire home with its contents — and even buy the house itself, delivered through the mail in sections.

But in 1991, Sears relinquished its title as the nation’s best-selling retailer to rival Walmart. More recently, the company has shown its age, failing to keep up with customers' shifting tastes and habits, and seeing its sales and profits crater as a result.

Much like defunct department store chains of old, such as Montgomery Ward and Mervyn's, Sears lost its grip on American shoppers as niche retailers provided alternatives to shoppers.

What's going on at the mall?: Foothills mall owners file early redevelopment plans for offices, retail, housing

But Sears also suffered because of problems of its own making — including the sale of its more than $30 billion credit portfolio to Citibank in 2003.

In the short term, that move likely made sense, industry watchers said, but the retailer gave away a stream of cash that could have helped it down the line.

More recently, the drumbeat of bad news for Sears accelerated. The company sold its signature Craftsman tool brand in early 2017 to Stanley Black & Decker for roughly $900 million in order to raise cash. Soon thereafter, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had "substantial doubt" about its ability to stay in business unless it could borrow more and tap cash from assets.

In October 2017, the company said that for the first time in more than a century, Sears would no longer sell Whirlpool appliances. While Whirlpool said it decided to end the relationship because it could not reach an agreement with the retailer on pricing, analysts said the move was another signal that Sears — once the dominant player in the appliance space — was becoming increasingly irrelevant.

 USA TODAY contributed to this report. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Sears Appliances is closing in Fort Collins