Two Chicago Walmart Express locations are among the 269 stores the company plans to close worldwide this month.
The stores, located at 3636 N. Broadway St. in the city's Lakeview neighborhood and 225 W. Chicago Ave. in the River North neighborhood, are both set to close Sunday, impacting about 110 employees, the company said.
Wal-Mart announced Friday it will close 269 stores across the world, including 154 in the U.S. The closings will impact 16,000 employees, about 10,000 of whom are employed in the U.S.
As part of its shifting focus toward Supercenters and Neighborhood Markets in profitable locations, the world's largest retailer plans to open as many as 405 stores globally in the coming fiscal year.
The U.S. store closures will mostly impact the company's Walmart Express stores, which account for 102 of the closings. These small stores, which are comparable in size to a dollar store, had been in pilot since 2011. They were rebranded as Neighborhood Market in 2014.
In addition to the Chicago closures, other stores closing in the Midwest include a Wal-Mart store at 5825 W. Hope Ave. in Milwaukee and two Neighborhood Market stores in Menomonee Falls and Waukesha, Wisconsin.
