Sears Holding Corp. is liquidating the inventory of its Sears Grand store in American Fork with an eye toward closing the retail facility for good in late February.

The company's American Fork store is being shuttered amid a sharp nationwide pullback in consumer spending, a result of the deepening recession that began in early 2008 and is expected to continue well into this year.

Sears identified the American Fork store in November as one of 22 underperforming stores that it intended to close during the first quarter of 2009.

"We close stores as a normal part of our business all the time," Sears spokeswoman Kimberly Freely said. "We have over 3,900 stores, so those [22] stores represent a very small part of our overall operations."

The American Fork store, which employs 70 people, originally opened as a Kmart in 1990. It was converted in 2006 to a Sears Grand location following Kmart's $11 billion acquisition of Sears two years earlier.

Freely said the company is anticipating that many of the American Fork store employees will find work at other Sears and Kmart stores in the area. Sears currently operates 16 Kmart stores in Utah, three Sears Grand locations and five smaller Sears specialty outlets, such as its appliance and automotive centers.

Todd Anderson of American Fork, who was shopping at the store on Friday, said he isn't surprised Sears is closing the location, given the small amount of business that he could see it was doing recently.

Although Debbie Roots of Lehi, who shops at the American Fork Sears, said the store's closing was "unfortunate," she noted there are plenty of other stores in the area where she will shop. "The competition out there is unbelievable."

American Fork Mayor Heber Thompson said it would be a loss for any community to see a name-brand store close.

"We had great hopes for the store when it was converted to a Sears Grand location but I don't think they did a real good job marketing it. They never seemed to be able to differentiate what they were offering there from other competitors in the area."

Debby Laurent, American Fork's economic development director, said while the closing of the Sears store was "sad," she expects that when the economy rebounds, the vacant building will quickly be reoccupied.

"It has everything anyone would want from a commercial property standpoint -- location, location, location," she said. "I'm sure that once the economy picks up again, that someone will want to come in and take advantage of it."

The Tribune's Dawn House contributed to this report.