News that Kmart is closing its Natchez store in December came a bit suddenly Friday, particularly for the 30 employees who will be without a job soon.

For those with a negative outlook on the world, the departure of Kmart will likely be viewed as a sign of just how bad things in Natchez have become.

They’ll point to the departure of J.C. Penney two years ago. They’ll point to the closure of International Paper, Johns Manville, Titan Tire and others.

But what those naysayers often miss is that in the majority of those cases, Natchez — with its problems and its warts — had little to nothing to do with the closure of those businesses.

In most cases, national or global forces were at play, not Natchez-specific problems.

Kmart is closing because its parent company is burning through cash at unbelievable rates.

A Moody’s Investors Services analyst suggested last week parent company Sears Holdings — which owns Kmart and Sears stores — may be burning approximately $1.5 billion annually.

The fact is that the world has changed radically — and Sears and Kmart did not keep up.

The financial losses are staggering.

Kmart’s revenue dropped from $37 billion in 2000 to just $10 billion 15 years later.

Sears over the same period dropped from $41 billion to $15 billion in annual revenues.

Was the Natchez Kmart a factor in that? We don’t know since the company does not publicly disclose financial performance of individual stores. But suffice to say the Natchez store was merely a fraction of a much larger problem.

Still 30 employees — surprisingly only 10 of which were full time — will be without jobs just before Christmas when the store is closed permanently.

Hopefully, they will quickly find employment elsewhere.

The slow, grinding demise of some large-box retailers should come as no surprise. Millions upon millions of Americans simply find it’s far more convenient to order some things online — where the inventory is practically endless and the transaction can occur at the customer’s time and place of choosing, not just when a brick and mortar store is open.

For Natchez, the key needs to be not getting down on our community for the demise of Kmart, but trying to focus our time and resources on making the best of the community.

Businesses always come and go. That’s the nature of capitalism.

What are we as a community doing to improve the quality of life and the business climate?

To me, it’s utterly ridiculous and embarrassing how some of our elected officials are acting of late.

County supervisors took raises that are undeserved while raising taxes due to school district funding demands.

Natchez aldermen apparently did not fully vet all the health insurance providers to find the lowest cost option while the city’s burning through cash.

That nonsense must stop.

Then, every business person, professional, concerned citizen and anyone else who loves Natchez must get focused and involved in how we turn around our area’s declining population — which feeds all other problems.

Join the chamber of commerce, volunteer at one of the various non-profits here or invest money into the Natchez Now private funding group for economic development.

Our area desperately needs a growing population of employed people. Period. With that all the rest will follow — better retail growth, more growth in health care, more specialty physicians, etc.

Our problems are widely known and have little to do with the Kmarts of the world, but Natchez remains a special and unique place. If we can put aside our differences long enough, we might just be able to reverse the decline in population and help Natchez soar again. When we do, we’ll be hard-pressed to remember how upset we were on the day Kmart closed.
Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.