The Sears at Sunvalley Mall is the last one standing in California — one of only five locations still operating nationwide, with the next closest store all the way in El Paso, Texas. And against every reasonable prediction, it's not just surviving. It's growing.

Management reports that sales figures are actually on the rise, making the Concord location the best-performing Sears in the country. The driver? A phenomenon they're calling "nostalgia tourism" — people making pilgrimages to what is essentially a living retail museum. The store recently underwent a full layout remodel and is receiving so much new inventory that they've run out of empty fixtures. That's right: their biggest operational headache is having too much product. For a brand that spent years looking like a going-out-of-business sale with a pulse, that's remarkable.

As one Bay Area resident put it, "Sears was such a core childhood mall memory and it's wild that Sunvalley of all places is the last CA one standing. Might have to swing by this weekend just to walk around and mentally time travel to 2004 for an hour."

There's a lesson here that city planners and economic development bureaucrats should probably write down: sometimes the market figures things out on its own. Nobody gave Sears a tax incentive package to stay in Concord. No board of supervisors passed a resolution declaring the store a "cultural asset" worthy of public funding. A business found its niche, leaned into it, and customers responded.

Another local noted that Sunvalley Mall also still has a Fuddruckers and a Golden Corral — making it less a shopping center and more a time capsule with a food court.

We're not saying Sears is going to reclaim its spot as an American retail titan. But in a region where we've watched billions in public money chase economic development schemes that collapse under their own bureaucratic weight, there's something deeply satisfying about a 138-year-old brand clawing its way back with nothing more than Craftsman tools, Kenmore refrigerators, and sheer stubbornness.

Long live the last Sears in California. No subsidy required.