All three Carson's department stores in Northwest Indiana potentially could close.
Parent company The Bon Ton Stores, which operates about 260 department stores across the country, started a bankruptcy court-supervised auction Monday and still hasn't announced the results after two days.
Mall operators already are filing objections in court to the prospect of garish liquidation sales with balloons, flashing lights and scores of signs. The international news service Reuters, citing anonymous sources, reported that only two initial bids were made by groups looking to liquidate the troubled retailer, which employs 20,000 workers across the Midwest and Northeast.
Bon Ton officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Locally, the chain operates Carson's department stores in Southlake Mall in Hobart, the Marquette Mall in Michigan City and in Hammond, where the two-story store is all that remains of the once-thriving but now largely demolished Woodmar Mall.
Mall operators are writing the company off as dead after Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Retail Partners, which want to liquidate the regional department store chain, put in the auction's baseline bid, according to recent court filings.
"Westshore understands that debtors conducted an auction on April 16, 2018, but the debtors have not yet filed a notice of the successful bidder at the auction," attorneys for Michigan-based Westshore Mall Investors LLC wrote in a filing. "Westshore assumes that the successful bidder will conduct store closing sales at the debtor's retail locations, including at the premises."
Westshore asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware on Tuesday to prohibit a buyer from using excessive signs, banners, fliers and people dancing outside to promote a liquidation sale at its mall in Holland, Michigan.
"A lengthy store closing sale would be detrimental to Westshore and other merchants in the center," Westshore's attorneys argued. "Accordingly, the term of the store sale should be limited to 90 days after the sale begins. In addition the debtors should not be able to extend the store sale without the consent of Westshore."
S&B Detrick Limited Partnership filed a similar objection to a prolonged and heavily promoted liquidation sale at its shopping center in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.
The Bon Ton Stores already filed Workers Adjustment and Retraining Act Notices in Indiana and other states that would allow it to shut down its stores and lay off all its employees within 60 days. Carson's employs 137 workers at Southlake and fewer in Hammond and Michigan City.
The troubled retailer closed its River Oaks location in Calumet City several years ago, and shuttered the Carson's Clearance Outlet in Lansing last year.