Michigan, the state where Kmart started, will soon be down to just three Kmart locations once the troubled retailer finishes its latest round of store closings in what has been a decade-long liquidation.

Kmart confirmed over the weekend that it plans to shutter nearly 100 more stores in December or earlier, including eight of its 11 remaining Michigan stores. Once they close, only three Kmarts will remain in the state: the Warren Kmart at 2000 Ten Mile; the Waterford Kmart at 5100 Dixie Highway; and the Marshall Kmart outside Battle Creek.

“After careful review, we have made the difficult but necessary decision to close the Kmart stores in Belleville, Hastings, Menominee, Midland, Clio, Grayling, Oscoda and Marine City, Michigan," company spokesman Larry Costello said in a statement Tuesday.

"The liquidation sales are expected to begin in mid-September and the stores are planned to close by mid-December," he continued. "We encourage customers to continue shopping on Kmart.com."

The company did not say whether any of the stores were still profitable.

Kmart, which is part of the old Sears Holdings, has essentially been in a death spiral for a decade.

In February, former Sears CEO Eddie Lampert struck a last-minute deal to buy Sears and Kmart assets out of bankruptcy and keep about 400 stores open under a new entity, Transform Holdco, also known as Transformco.

Lampert was the company's largest shareholder and creditor at the time of its bankruptcy.

The Kmart chain got its start 57 years ago as the big-box brand of the Detroit-based S.S. Kresge Co. It was for decades one of southeast Michigan's biggest employers and the nation's second-largest retailer. The company once had 134 locations in Michigan and was headquartered from 1972 until 2006 in Troy employing close to 5,000 people there at its peak.

More:Which Kmarts are actually open, who still shops there?

More:Kmart, Sears closing additional stores by the end of the year. Is your location closing?

There were still 38 Kmarts in Michigan at the start of 2017, a year that saw the original Kmart store in Garden City close.

In 2014, a Kmart in White Lake Township that featured a rare lime-green and gray color scheme and in 2002 was heralded as the retailer's "Store of the Future" shut its doors. That building is now a Kroger.

ContactJC Reindl at313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jcreindl. Read more on business and sign up for our business newsletter.