The final countdown is on: Downtown Macy's closes Sunday

The days of department store retailing in downtown Minneapolis will officially come to an end at 6 p.m. Sunday.

The landmark Macy's store at the corner of 7th and Nicollet Mall, formerly the beloved Dayton's flagship, is closing its doors for good in four days. It, of course, is the last department store standing along a retail corridor that once boasted several department stores.

The Macy's store liquidation sale started in early January, soon after the chain announced that it was one of 68 stores nationwide that it would shutter this year. The discounts, which started out at between 20 and 40 percent, are now upwards of 70 percent off. Signs throughout the store on Thursday provided some conflicting information with some indicating everything in the store was between 80 and 90 percent off while 70 percent off signs were still visible in some areas.

The store has been condensed to just three floors — the ground floor, the skyway level, and the fourth floor, which is only accessible by elevator. Most of the escalators, including to the emptied out basement, are now closed except for those that run between the first and second floor.

The first floor was mostly cleaned out by Thursday, but still had a small assortment of fine jewelry, including engagement rings marked down 70 percent, and some random holiday-themed knick-knacks and other costume jewelry. Liquidators have also brought in a large selection of rugs that were not normally sold at Macy's to be part of the store-closing sale.

On Thursday afternoon, the second floor still had a decent selection of women's apparel. But the men's clothing as well as a bedding and dishes were more limited.

On the fourth floor, Macy's is still selling various items from storage, including some of the figurines from past holiday shows as well as store fixtures and other assundry items such as old sewing machines from another era.

Here are some tweets from my visit to the store on Thursday afternoon: