ASHEVILLE — It is the end of days at Asheville's last Kmart store. Soon there will be no more blue light specials, no more Martha Stewart-branded towels and its signature big, red "K" almost certainly will be replaced with something else.

The Brevard Road store closes its doors Sunday, one of hundreds of Sears Holdings Corp. casualties amid a yearslong downward spiral landing the brand into bankruptcy proceedings.

But as the store prepares to cease operations, a half-dozen of its employees brandished signs and gathered out front of it Thursday to protest some tens of thousands of company job losses while taking aim at longtime corporate leader Eddie Lampert.

"It's sad, to put it in the shortest way possible," said Gabe Maguire, a seven-year Kmart employee. "With the way the company is going, it seemed almost inevitable, but for such a long time our store was doing well. We kept being reassured we weren't closing

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"And just a couple of months ago, they dropped the news on us. It was a little bit of a shock."

Group advocates for retail workers

The effort was promoted by the Rise Up Retail campaign of United for Respect, or OUR, a nonprofit advocating on behalf of retail workers.

The group has worked with employees of other brands such as Walmart, Amazon and Toys "R" Us, pushing for higher wages, sexual harassment protections and health care benefits. In the case of Asheville's Kmart store — and other soon-to-be shuttered locations — the nonprofit called on Sears Holdings to establish a hardship fund to provide financial relief for affected employees.

Maguire, also a member of OUR, additionally wants employee oversight of companies like Sears Holdings through board representation and federal legislation changes to better protect workers.

"A lot of retail is changing, and it's not all due to online sales and things like that," they said. "It is because of Wall Street greed interrupting a sustainable retail business."

It has been a difficult run for Sears Holdings' locations in Asheville. In October, the company announced the Patton Avenue Kmart store would be one of 142 stores including six in North Carolina to close as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. It followed in December with the decision to close 80 more stores, taking out the Brevard Road location near the Asheville Outlets.

The Asheville Mall Sears store and auto center closed in July to clear the way for a proposed $45 million redevelopment project expected to include high-density retail housing, stores, restaurants and an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, per developer Seritage Growth Properties.

Last month, a federal judge in New York authorized the sale of Sears' remaining assets to its chairman and largest shareholder Lampert's hedge fund, ESL Investments. Ahead of that decision, Lampert was accused in a January court filing by creditors of conducting a "multiyear and multifaceted scheme" to strip the company of its assets and capitalize off its decline, USA Today reported.

ESL denied the charge, saying the company is confident "the processes we followed are unimpeachable."

Regardless, the impending store closure has left many staffers in disbelief, said Kimberly Jackson, an employee with one year of service. A handful of customers were milling about the store Thursday afternoon, much of it empty and roped off to foot traffic. What remained were several loosely stocked aisles of various home goods, racks of deeply discounted clothes and the blue light flashing, seemingly for nobody in particular.

Although she's sad about job losses from the store, Jackson wondered what will become of the store's regular customers with few similar big-box options nearby.

"There have been so many customers who have expressed their deepest, heartfelt sympathy and they are torn up about this store closing," she said, adding, some have "shopped here for 20, 30 and 40 years and it's heartbreaking."