Sears Canada will in downtown Vancouver is getting ready to close its doors for good. The Globe and Mail reports that the struggling retailer will shut down three department stores in Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver (the location at Pacific Centre Mall, of course), selling its leases back to their landlord for $170-million -- from the Globe and Mail:

[Sears’ new chief executive officer, Calvin McDonald] said the sales results in the three stores that will close failed to reflect Sears’ strengths, particularly in the categories of appliances, furniture and mattresses. And in each of the three cities, the retailer has other nearby stores.

The closings of the Sears stores now provides Nordstrom with the opportunity to set up shop in Canada after it looked unsuccessfully for sites here for the past year.

The closure is expected to happen by the end of October. This comes just over a month after another major department store chain closed up shop in downtown—just two blocks away from Sears—the HMV on Robson Street.

The Sears location in Vancouver is one of the largest in Canada, rivalled only to the location in Toronto’s Eaton Centre. Vancouver's Sears has operated in Pacific Centre Mall since 2000.

The biggest question now is: What will become of this giant retail space in the middle of downtown?

Internet site reference: http://vancouver.openfile.ca/blog/curator-blog/curated-news/2012/sears-closing-its-doors-downtown-vancouver