SARANAC LAKE – Sears Hometown says it’s closing its Saranac Lake store because it wasn’t making enough money.

The company, in a four-sentence statement emailed to the Enterprise Monday by a public relations firm, said it closes and opens stores in the normal course of business, “closing stores which are not providing sufficient returns in order to reinvest our efforts into higher return opportunities.”

That’s the first and only indication the company has given about why the Main Street store is closing.

The Enterprise reached out to Sears Hometown last week after the Saranac Lake store’s owner, George Hamelin, said the parent company had decided to shut it down but didn’t give him a reason why.

“We wanted to keep it open,” he said. “Sears (Hometown) saw it differently.”

Hamelin said he looked at the numbers and found there had been a steady decrease in business at the Saranac Lake store in the five years before he bought it, “but there’s still the potential for the store to be making good money, so that’s why we took it.”

The company said the store will close toward the end of the month. A liquidation sale started last week.

“Customers can get great deals during the liquidation and can buy with confidence knowing that the store in Massena is continuing to serve the community,” the Sears’ statement reads.

The Main Street Sears opened in 2000. Its pending closure leaves the building it’s located in, which is owned by Paolo Magro, with two vacancies. Nori’s Village Market was behind Sears until it relocated to Woodruff Street earlier this summer.