BANGOR – For years the manager of Porteous department store has been asked by customers whether the anchor store at the Bangor Mall would be closing for good anytime soon. On Monday, she began answering “yes.”

Porteous’ 35 employees were notified Monday morning of the pending closure, set for Jan. 18. A liquidation sale will begin Nov. 14, and the store will be closed Nov. 10-13 to prepare for the sale.

“Most of us knew it was inevitable,” said manager April Ripley of the employees’ reaction to the closure announcement. “It’s been hard because we’ve lived with these rumors for a long, long time. [But now] there’s a finality to it all.”

Although Ripley said retail sales have slowed nationally in the last couple of years, Porteous was hit even harder by department store competition within its own mall. Filene’s opened in November 1998 with a weekly barrage of sales, and Sears and J.C. Penney followed with renovations of their own and increased sales promotions. And Porteous, which began operations in Bangor when the mall first opened its doors in October 1978, was forced to reduce its hours in order to save money and stay in business until its lease was up.

The pending vacancy leaves Kravco Co., owners of the Bangor Mall, salivating about the prospect of filling what is considered to be the most popular piece of property at the shopping hub. The 68,400-square-foot retail space is located at the center of the mall, where people congregate to eat, visit Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and stroll through crafts fairs.

Mall manager Bruce Soper said Kravco “will now pursue actively a reliable, productive tenant” to fill the space. Kravco has many options, he said, including the possibility of dividing the space for two tenants. He wouldn’t name any possible replacement stores, however.

More than two years ago, when rumors of the Porteous closing already were circulating, the chairman of Kravco, Wayne Snyder, said the size of the store at the Bangor Mall didn’t fit the specifications of many department stores.

“It’s got a size that in some cases is too big and in some cases is too small,” Snyder said.

Porteous is owned by PMB Inc., a subsidiary of The Dunlap Co. of Fort Worth, Texas. PMB purchased the six Porteous retail operations in New England in the early 1990s. The Porteous family, however, retained ownership of a number of the buildings that housed the retail stores, including the space at Bangor Mall, and leased the space to PMB. Kravco, however, owns the land underneath the retail store.

More than two years ago, the Porteous family put its Bangor Mall space on the market for $3 million, but took the “for sale” sign down a couple of months later. The family still entertains offers, however, and occasionally talks with Kravco about it.

Soper said “it’s still a possibility” that Kravco could buy the facility from the Porteous family, but not for $3 million.

“That’s a little high,” he said.

Only two Porteous stores currently are open, the one at the Bangor Mall and one in Presque Isle at the Aroostook Centre Mall. The Presque Isle store will remain open, according to Dale Mathews, senior vice president of Dunlap. The company intends to honor the remaining five years on its lease at Aroostook Centre Mall, he said.

In its heyday, the now almost 100-year-old Porteous dominated the New England retail landscape. And at the time of its sale to PMB about 10 years ago, the chain employed more than 650 people.

In the last two years, there has been much speculation among Bangor Mall shoppers as to whether Porteous was financially solvent. The rumors were fueled each time PMB announced that one of its Porteous stores in New England would close for good. The Brunswick and Auburn stores in Maine were the latest to cease operations, the Brunswick site last year and the Auburn location this summer.

A year ago, in an attempt to compete with other retailers, the Bangor Porteous decided to reduce the number of hours it stayed open. While the mall remained open until 9 p.m., the store closed at 6 p.m. weekdays. The retailer’s area manager at the time said that during the last 10 years, the company noticed that a lot of people did not want to shop at department stores at night.

“We decided there wasn’t enough traffic at the Bangor Mall store in the evening to justify the expense,” the regional manager said in August 2001. “We are doing it because we think it’s a good move to sustain the store.”

For the next 21/2 months, Porteous will be open during normal mall hours, Ripley said Monday. Mathews added that everything in the building would be sold, “right down to the fixtures.”