{"id":52974,"date":"2020-07-01T21:02:31","date_gmt":"2020-07-02T03:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/sears-closes-doors-of-an-iconic-cortez-store\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T10:02:09","slug":"sears-closes-doors-of-an-iconic-cortez-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/sears-closes-doors-of-an-iconic-cortez-store\/","title":{"rendered":"Sears closes doors of an iconic Cortez store"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=2325e2fe-0174-466e-ab9b-fab3c87705a3&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1563\" alt=\"Sears closed its doors in Cortez June 26.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Sears closed its doors in Cortez June 26.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>An American icon of retail department stores has departed Cortez.<\/p>\n<p>Even its location at Market and Main streets evokes its enduring symbol of traditional brick-and-mortar capitalism.<\/p>\n<p>But after more than 50 years at various locations in town, Sears closed the local store June 26.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are sad to leave the Cortez market,\u201d said district sales manager Stewart Farris.<\/p>\n<p>The appliance market has become very competitive, he said, and the customer volume was not enough to support it.<\/p>\n<p>The Durango Hometown Sears remains open, and Cortez customers are being directed to that location, Farris said.<\/p>\n<p>The closing sale, with deals up to 70% off, went well, he added. Remaining inventory has been cleared out.<\/p>\n<p>Store owners David and Naomi Farrell declined to comment about the closing.<\/p>\n<p>The 10,000-square-foot building is owned by Anna M. Helms of Sun City, Arizona, according to the Montezuma County Assessor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n<p>Sears has had a long presence in Cortez and been in multiple locations.<\/p>\n<p>Jan and Clyde Hutchinson owned the store in the early 1970s when it was on the west end of town, near where the Burger King is now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a busy place back then,\u201d said their son David Hutchinson. \u201cAs kids, we kind of had run of the place. After school, I helped with deliveries, and one of my jobs was to stoke the coal heater.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was a shop in the back where bicycles were built, he said. The main products sold were appliances, tires, lawnmowers and batteries.<\/p>\n<p>The store moved to Maple and Main streets, and was across from City Market before moving to its final location at Market and Main.<\/p>\n<p>Sears donated to Montezuma-Cortez High School, and a picture of the store with students was a regular feature in the annual yearbooks.<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:jmimiaga@the-journal.com\">jmimiaga@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>had lasting presence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,11,13,28,29,500],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-52974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-economy-general","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-retail"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88182,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52974\/revisions\/88182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52974"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=52974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}