Why Was the Sears Tower Built?

The Sears Tower was built for one of the most famous retailers in history: Sears Roebuck and Company. One of the largest buildings in the world, even surpassing New York City’s Empire State Building to claim the status as the tallest building in the United States, the Sears Tower is located in Chicago. It is a very unique structure that was built to celebrate Sears, Roebuck and Company’s aspiring expansion goals and growth. The Tower itself also possesses an interesting history.

Sears, Roebuck and Company was one of the biggest retailers in the entire world. In many ways, they could be considered to be what Wal-Mart is today.

Sears believed that the company was headed in the direction of great growth and expansion. In 1969, the company boasted 350,000 employees and needed a building that would not only accommodate the large number of employees at the current time but also any future growth. Thus, Sears sought the assistance of the architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in order build the structure which would become the Sears Tower.

The building was designed in a very unique manner to include a 3x3 grid, which features nine “tubes”. The main structure of the building was designed so that varying levels of the building would rise a bit higher than others. All of the structures that composed the entire building were built to the 50th floor and then select structures would be built to different levels. This design was made because Sears wanted to ultimately utilize portions of the building as leased space for businesses.

The building was completed in 1973. Sears Tower is 1,730 feet tall, and it has 108 floors and 104 elevators.

Big Prospects Go Unfulfilled

There is no question that Sears felt that its future was quite expansive. With such a gigantic building Sears, set out to lease the empty space to businesses, confident that the building would attract plenty of renters.

However, Sears saw its popularity steadily decline as a number of other retailers became very popular throughout the 1970s. Sears found that the building wasn’t the huge draw that they thought it would be, which left much of the building empty. Throughout the 1970s the Sears Tower was only half occupied and in order to keep the building, Sears took out a mortgage on it.

As many high profile tenants begin to leave the building, Sears realized that it would have to eventually sell the building and begin the process of moving to new facilities in Hoffman Estates, Illinois in 1992.

By 1985 when Sears officially sold the building to AEW Capital Management, with financing backed by MetLife, the building was only leased to a third of its capacity.

Financial problems incurred by the AEW Capital Management would later occur, and as a result, the building was returned to MetLife twice, until it was sold in 2004 to a group of New York investors for 840 million dollars.

Interesting Facts About the Sears Tower

There are a number of interesting facts about the Sears Tower, which has become a very popular tourist attraction in Chicago. For example:

• It was built with an observation deck called the Skydeck, which is located on the 103rd floor.
• This tower is also used as a broadcasting hub, as antennas were placed on top for this purpose.
• The building sways on windy days and it leans slightly to the west about four inches.
• Because of the height of the building, many daredevils have climbed the building as if they were modern day Spidermen.

As of July 2009, the building is no longer known as the Sears Tower and is now known as the Willis Tower. An insurance brokerage from London Willis Group Holdings, Ltd. leased a portion of the building and in turn received naming rights, changing the name from Sears Tower to Willis Tower despite angering many local residents.