Whole Foods to take over Sears locations?

Vacant Sears locations could soon be flipped into new Whole Foods Market locations, according to a CNBC article.

According to the article, BMO Capital Markets in a note to clients, estimates that Amazon, with Whole Foods Market, could be interested in filling as many as 110 old Sears and Kmart stores, based on the surrounding demographics of those department stores and the fact that they don’t have another Whole Foods store already within a three-mile radius.

“There are plenty of Sears/Kmart boxes surrounded by high quality demographics which would be appealing to a variety of retailers and other non-retail uses (i.e. hotels, residential, creative office, etc),” BMO Analyst Brandon Cheatham said. “Further, there aren’t many developers that are building additional, ground up, retail space, so if Amazon, or others, is looking to grow somewhat rapidly this would be a quick and likely cheap(er) way to expand.”

To read the CNBC article, click here.