Macy’s department store at Lakeside Mall in Sterling Heights is in the middle of its final week of sales — and existence.

The New York-based retailer is closing its last store in Macomb County. A liquidation sale has emptied the store’s shelves and display cases mostly empty.

Small handfuls of shoppers hoping to score last-minutes deals were left disappointed.

“There’s not much here, but I thought I would look just to see,” said a Shelby Township woman who declined to identify herself.

Macy’s was expected to remain on as part of the shuttered Lakeside Mall as the shopping center transitions into a years-long massive $1 billion redevelopment plan.

In September, the owners of the closed mall agreed to purchase the Sterling Heights Macy’s store.

The company said they were “in a sale-and-lease back agreement” with Macy’s, a spokesperson for Allison Greenfield, chief development officer at Lionheart Capital, a Miami-based retail subsidiary of Out of the Box Ventures, which owns the shopping center, said.

The purchase of the Sterling Heights Macy’s was being made possible with the support of the grant that Out of the Box Ventures received in 2024 from the City of Sterling Heights.

Developers plan to demolish much of the existing mall and create a Town Center, consisting of new offices, apartments, retail space, a 120-room hotel with attached parking deck, restaurants, recreational amenities, and more along Hall Road (M-59).

The Macy’s stores at Lakeside and Oakland Mall in neighboring Troy — which also is closing — are on a list of 66 “underproductive” stores scheduled to close in 2025, the retailer has said on its website.

The closures are part of the New York-based company’s “A Bold New Chapter” plan as the struggling department store chain is getting smaller as it continues to deal with declining sales. The plan was announced in February 2024.

By closing the underproductive stores, Macy’s can focus its resources to the “go-forward stores, where customers are already responding positively to better product offerings and elevated service,” Tony Spring, chairman and chief executive officer of Macy’s, Inc., said in January.

Other Michigan Macy’s closing include Genesee Valley Center in Flint and Grand Traverse Mall in Traverse City.

That leaves 10 remaining Macy’s in Michigan, including in Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Grandville, Kentwood, Novi, Okemos, Portage, Saginaw, Taylor and the Somerset Collection in Troy.

Macy’s in Sterling Heights will permanently shut down on Sunday, according to a schedule posted on the store entrance.