Walmart announced that the company will be closing four stores in Chicago’s crime-ridden South Side and West Side sections.
The retail giant announced the closures on Tuesday, citing lack of profitability as the main reason for shuttering the stores. The neighborhoods in which Walmart announced the closures — Chatham, Kenwood, Lakeview and Little Village — have long-struggled with crime and violence.
“The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago – these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years,” Walmart said in a statement.