Ghost Plants (not greenery)
September 19, 2018 12:48 PM Subscribe
Reusing huge abandoned Sears buildings across urban America. A few years back, I [author] moved into a Sears building — no, not that famous skyscraper in Chicago, or one of those department stores in the suburbs, but a city block-sized brick behemoth just south of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. Formerly known as the “Sears, Roebuck and Company Mail-Order Warehouse and Retail Store,” it was a distribution center for an empire that revolutionized commerce in the 20th century. Today, it plays a new role in the post-industrial age, as do a series of similar-looking Sears “plants” in cities around the United States.
And this building isn’t alone: similarly massive “plant” complexes can be found around the United States, and some have been adapted to new, place-specific uses. Most are easy to spot, featuring Art Deco details and a tall central tower (designed to conceal a huge elevated water cistern). Some have been demolished over the years, but others have been remade, adapting to and becoming reflections of the cities they inhabit.
And this building isn’t alone: similarly massive “plant” complexes can be found around the United States, and some have been adapted to new, place-specific uses. Most are easy to spot, featuring Art Deco details and a tall central tower (designed to conceal a huge elevated water cistern). Some have been demolished over the years, but others have been remade, adapting to and becoming reflections of the cities they inhabit.
This is cool, and makes me wonder if something similar could be done for abandoned malls.
That being said, for some reason this drove me nuts:
Its main-level Midtown Global Market features boutique shops and eateries.
God forbid we call them "stores and restaurants"! This development isn't for people who use such plebeian terms!
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:01 PM on September 19, 2018 [15 favorites]
That being said, for some reason this drove me nuts:
Its main-level Midtown Global Market features boutique shops and eateries.
God forbid we call them "stores and restaurants"! This development isn't for people who use such plebeian terms!
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:01 PM on September 19, 2018 [15 favorites]
Neat. The Sears in Cambridge, MA closed in 1985 and has been a mixture of Leslie University and Asian restaurants (I think they called it Little Japan for a while), with the University people occasionally kicking out a restaurant or two when they feel the need to expand their offices.
The one in Burlington, MA just closed this year and is slated to become a "Lifestyle Center", whatever the heck that means.
posted by Melismata at 1:04 PM on September 19, 2018
The one in Burlington, MA just closed this year and is slated to become a "Lifestyle Center", whatever the heck that means.
posted by Melismata at 1:04 PM on September 19, 2018
This is cool, and makes me wonder if something similar could be done for abandoned malls.
It's already being done to malls. In Kitchener/Waterloo (in Canada) there are two former second-tier malls that are now office space. It's already happened to dozens if not hundreds of second-tier malls across the US.
posted by GuyZero at 1:07 PM on September 19, 2018
It's already being done to malls. In Kitchener/Waterloo (in Canada) there are two former second-tier malls that are now office space. It's already happened to dozens if not hundreds of second-tier malls across the US.
posted by GuyZero at 1:07 PM on September 19, 2018
The Midtown Global Market is AWESOME!!!
I'm old enough to remember when the first floor was still being used as a Sears store. I remember being dragged there to get winter coats every year. The walls inside were kind of a weird institutional yellow color, and all of the light bulbs were also kind of yellowish, making the whole place feel kind of putrid. The ceilings were high and the sounds (constant beeping and announcements) bounced around with disorienting echoes. I hated it there. My mother mumbled something about "good deals" and I tolerated it.
posted by Elly Vortex at 1:19 PM on September 19, 2018 [6 favorites]
I'm old enough to remember when the first floor was still being used as a Sears store. I remember being dragged there to get winter coats every year. The walls inside were kind of a weird institutional yellow color, and all of the light bulbs were also kind of yellowish, making the whole place feel kind of putrid. The ceilings were high and the sounds (constant beeping and announcements) bounced around with disorienting echoes. I hated it there. My mother mumbled something about "good deals" and I tolerated it.
posted by Elly Vortex at 1:19 PM on September 19, 2018 [6 favorites]
Cool! I knew of this in Atlanta, but it hadn't crossed my attention that it was done elsewhere.
posted by thelonius at 1:21 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by thelonius at 1:21 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Yeesh, the stores and restaurants in Midtown Global Market also are absolutely not boutique. The cheese and deli stand is a little bit fancy, I guess. Mostly it's good but regular-ass groceries and tacos and falafel and pizza.
posted by clavicle at 1:23 PM on September 19, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by clavicle at 1:23 PM on September 19, 2018 [3 favorites]
(I used to love going there in childhood, when it was still a Sears)
posted by thelonius at 1:23 PM on September 19, 2018
posted by thelonius at 1:23 PM on September 19, 2018
This is awesome. I've seen plenty of repurposed Sears department stores (and have slept in one), but the Sears plants are new to me. According to this CityLab article from last year, there are only seven of the plants still standing.
posted by asperity at 1:40 PM on September 19, 2018
posted by asperity at 1:40 PM on September 19, 2018
I also remember going to that Sears as a kid and getting Swedish Fish.
posted by Sphinx at 1:40 PM on September 19, 2018
posted by Sphinx at 1:40 PM on September 19, 2018
There's a vast J.C. Penny distribution center and outlet store near where I spent time as a kid, an epic, 2 million square foot example of 1980s geometric brutalism. It looks like someone designed a warehouse that could also survive a nuclear war. I've been keeping an eye on it, figuring at some point it would either be razed for suburban sprawl or used for some other purpose (I mean, JCP can't possibly be using almost 2 mil sqft of DC space these days), and wondering what else you could fit into such an inhospitable structure.
Apparently it's going to be used for light industrial space, which is nice. I like the architecture, but I'm not sure I'd want to live or work there. In contrast to the 19th and early 20th century factory spaces all over New England, which are convertible to pretty nice, airy loft apartments and high-tech offices, it seems like more recently-built commercial and industrial spaces are really challenging to reuse.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:41 PM on September 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
Apparently it's going to be used for light industrial space, which is nice. I like the architecture, but I'm not sure I'd want to live or work there. In contrast to the 19th and early 20th century factory spaces all over New England, which are convertible to pretty nice, airy loft apartments and high-tech offices, it seems like more recently-built commercial and industrial spaces are really challenging to reuse.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:41 PM on September 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
The Crosstown Concourse is thriving in Memphis.
posted by vibrotronica at 1:42 PM on September 19, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by vibrotronica at 1:42 PM on September 19, 2018 [4 favorites]
When you said massive JCP distribution center, I was thinking of the one outside of Milwaukee. But, lo, that's another 2 million square feet besides the Connecticut building! (and it's closing too). And there are others!
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:56 PM on September 19, 2018
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:56 PM on September 19, 2018
As a BU college kid in the late '90s, I always loved the abandoned Art Deco Sears building which loomed over the Fenway neighborhood on Park Drive in Boston. I have many fond memories of walking by there at 2 or 3 in the morning, my head swimming with clubland stardust and cheap vodka, appreciating the foreboding old structure like a sentinel from the past. Of course, not long after I graduated, it got rehabbed into a typical mixed-use office/retail space of the kind that now devours old neighborhood institutions here in L.A. I preferred it in its diminished state of bygone glory, but alas, the world is not my hauntology theme park, so.
posted by mykescipark at 1:57 PM on September 19, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by mykescipark at 1:57 PM on September 19, 2018 [4 favorites]
boutique shops and eateries ... This development isn't for people who use such plebeian terms!
Those terms are telling me that I won't find an Applebee's or Walgreens inside but local places. This is not City Center mall.
posted by soelo at 2:00 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Those terms are telling me that I won't find an Applebee's or Walgreens inside but local places. This is not City Center mall.
posted by soelo at 2:00 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
God forbid we call them "stores and restaurants"! This development isn't for people who use such plebeian terms!
It actually isn't as much of a gentrification station as you'd think, partly because a Hennepin County service center is in the basement and a major bus transfer station is right outside and so basically everybody from the area passes through at one point or another, and partly because there are a number of affordable mini groceries and food stalls inside, also because there's a big central space to sit which is pretty loosely monitored, at least every time I've been there - so you don't have to spend a lot of money to be there. It does not center working class people, that's for sure, but it doesn't exclude us either.
Also, across Chicago is the ancient and cluttered Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction bookstore where, famously, "Heinlein is in boxes on the floor" - there are too many books for the shelves, so large cardboard flats of used paperbacks, by author, sit in stacks next to the shelves. They don't make 'em like Uncle Hugo's anymore, and if you care about that sort of thing you should stop by and see it before it's too late.
posted by Frowner at 2:01 PM on September 19, 2018 [10 favorites]
It actually isn't as much of a gentrification station as you'd think, partly because a Hennepin County service center is in the basement and a major bus transfer station is right outside and so basically everybody from the area passes through at one point or another, and partly because there are a number of affordable mini groceries and food stalls inside, also because there's a big central space to sit which is pretty loosely monitored, at least every time I've been there - so you don't have to spend a lot of money to be there. It does not center working class people, that's for sure, but it doesn't exclude us either.
Also, across Chicago is the ancient and cluttered Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction bookstore where, famously, "Heinlein is in boxes on the floor" - there are too many books for the shelves, so large cardboard flats of used paperbacks, by author, sit in stacks next to the shelves. They don't make 'em like Uncle Hugo's anymore, and if you care about that sort of thing you should stop by and see it before it's too late.
posted by Frowner at 2:01 PM on September 19, 2018 [10 favorites]
Mostly it's good but regular-ass groceries and tacos and falafel and pizza.
the tacos may be "regular-ass" but the huaraches are top of the heap (but yeah i hate the word eatery so much).
In less "lifestyle" oriented redevelopment and more "life-sustaining" theres the story of the Jackson Medical Mall. Jackson, MS's first mall was a goner after about 20 years, but Dr. Aaron Shirley had a vision - from the foundation that runs the places history: In 1995, Dr. Aaron Shirley, former project director for Mississippi’s largest community health center and a longtime resident of Midtown, was walking through the old mall’s echoing corridors when he conceived a plan to bring it and the surrounding community back to life. Dr. Shirley envisioned a comprehensive, mutidisciplinary healthcare complex. He proposed that the property be converted to a state-of-the-art ambulatory healthcare facility, providing quality healthcare for the underserved of Jackson, Mississippi. This ambitious vision for rebirth and renewal would be in Dr. Shirley’s words, “a community-based venture,” in terms of its ownership and mission.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 2:02 PM on September 19, 2018 [7 favorites]
the tacos may be "regular-ass" but the huaraches are top of the heap (but yeah i hate the word eatery so much).
In less "lifestyle" oriented redevelopment and more "life-sustaining" theres the story of the Jackson Medical Mall. Jackson, MS's first mall was a goner after about 20 years, but Dr. Aaron Shirley had a vision - from the foundation that runs the places history: In 1995, Dr. Aaron Shirley, former project director for Mississippi’s largest community health center and a longtime resident of Midtown, was walking through the old mall’s echoing corridors when he conceived a plan to bring it and the surrounding community back to life. Dr. Shirley envisioned a comprehensive, mutidisciplinary healthcare complex. He proposed that the property be converted to a state-of-the-art ambulatory healthcare facility, providing quality healthcare for the underserved of Jackson, Mississippi. This ambitious vision for rebirth and renewal would be in Dr. Shirley’s words, “a community-based venture,” in terms of its ownership and mission.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 2:02 PM on September 19, 2018 [7 favorites]
My mother's stepfather was Julius Rosenwald's nephew, unfortunately he didn't inherit any of his elder's noble qualities.
posted by brujita at 2:10 PM on September 19, 2018
posted by brujita at 2:10 PM on September 19, 2018
The old Sears building in Seattle is now Starbucks HQ. It still had a Sears store in one corner until a few years back.
posted by calamari kid at 2:35 PM on September 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by calamari kid at 2:35 PM on September 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
Reading this article reminds me of Pastabagel's 2007 post on how Sears could have had the position Amazon has now, if they had just had adapted quicker.
posted by radwolf76 at 2:53 PM on September 19, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by radwolf76 at 2:53 PM on September 19, 2018 [8 favorites]
Fun fact for you Laura Ingalls Wilder buffs: Almanzo Wilder was friends with Richard Sears when they lived in Spring Valley, Minnesota!
posted by Melismata at 2:55 PM on September 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 2:55 PM on September 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
I like this reuse of huge abandoned buildings. An abandoned mall in Austin, TX has been turned into a community college campus, and is being expanded to include apartments and offices. They even put a light-rail stop there.
I have problems with the way that “mixed-use” developments seem to always wind up as expensive “luxury” apartments (meaning shoddy construction, but they’ll chuck in some marble countertops and triple the rent) and boring chain stores. But in theory, I like high-density, walkable development. I guess I’d rather have high-density McPenthouses than sprawly McMansions, since those appear to be the only two options.
posted by snowmentality at 3:15 PM on September 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
I have problems with the way that “mixed-use” developments seem to always wind up as expensive “luxury” apartments (meaning shoddy construction, but they’ll chuck in some marble countertops and triple the rent) and boring chain stores. But in theory, I like high-density, walkable development. I guess I’d rather have high-density McPenthouses than sprawly McMansions, since those appear to be the only two options.
posted by snowmentality at 3:15 PM on September 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
octothorpe: Sadly they tore Pittsburgh's East Liberty Sears down about 25 years ago so that they could stick a suburban Home Depot in the middle of an urban neighborhood.
The Sears complex and it's landmark clock tower in Philadelphia was torn down in 1994. The only parts of it left standing are the power plant (with an ad for the Home Depot that is part of the mall that replaced the complex on the smokestack), and a firehouse that was a miniature of the main Sears building.
posted by Rob Rockets at 3:40 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
The Sears complex and it's landmark clock tower in Philadelphia was torn down in 1994. The only parts of it left standing are the power plant (with an ad for the Home Depot that is part of the mall that replaced the complex on the smokestack), and a firehouse that was a miniature of the main Sears building.
posted by Rob Rockets at 3:40 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Rackspace's HQ in San Antonio is a refurbished mall.
posted by ZeusHumms at 4:34 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by ZeusHumms at 4:34 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Midtown Global Market is great. You can eat an indurrito or a tacocat while you shop for Creedence tapes.
posted by neckro23 at 6:36 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by neckro23 at 6:36 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
My father worked in the Sears building in Memphis back in the 50s. As vibrotroniva says it’s a cool place now.
posted by grimjeer at 6:37 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by grimjeer at 6:37 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
The Sears in Cambridge, MA closed in 1985 and has been a mixture of Leslie University and Asian restaurants (I think they called it Little Japan for a while), with the University people occasionally kicking out a restaurant or two when they feel the need to expand their offices.
Wait, it used to be a Sears? And that’s why it has a tower? My kids call it The Noodle Castle and we go at least once a week to have the best ramen in MA.
posted by lydhre at 7:36 PM on September 19, 2018
Wait, it used to be a Sears? And that’s why it has a tower? My kids call it The Noodle Castle and we go at least once a week to have the best ramen in MA.
posted by lydhre at 7:36 PM on September 19, 2018
Here's the next article under the Sears article: Big Box Reuse
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:38 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:38 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
When you said massive JCP distribution center, I was thinking of the one outside of Milwaukee.
That looks like it could have been designed by the same architect... but maybe before they watched Threads and developed the bunker fetish.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:17 PM on September 19, 2018
That looks like it could have been designed by the same architect... but maybe before they watched Threads and developed the bunker fetish.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:17 PM on September 19, 2018
Unfortunately, Atlanta's Ponce City Market is less an awesome place for the neighbors to go and shop and eat and more the home of preposterously luxury apartments and a tourist destination for wealthy suburbanites and gentrifiers. Transit there is limited, parking is expensive, food is expensive, you have to pay to get on the roof deck, etc. The dream was that anybody in Atlanta could walk or take a streetcar along the Beltline from their (diverse, established) neighborhoods to places like PCM, but gentrification is destroying that dream.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:55 AM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by hydropsyche at 3:55 AM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
Wait, it used to be a Sears? And that’s why it has a tower? My kids call it The Noodle Castle and we go at least once a week to have the best ramen in MA.
Yup. At the main entrance, look carefully under the winged "Porter Exchange" sign thingy that's above the door. They've tried to hide the Sears Roebuck lettering that was engraved into the building, but it's still there.
posted by Melismata at 7:57 AM on September 20, 2018
Yup. At the main entrance, look carefully under the winged "Porter Exchange" sign thingy that's above the door. They've tried to hide the Sears Roebuck lettering that was engraved into the building, but it's still there.
posted by Melismata at 7:57 AM on September 20, 2018
Edit: I think the sign says "Leslie University" now, not "Porter Exchange."
posted by Melismata at 8:03 AM on September 20, 2018
posted by Melismata at 8:03 AM on September 20, 2018
Edit edit: Here's a picture of it, click on the second photo in the first column. Look under that green winged thingy, the words "Sears Roebuck and Co." are there.
posted by Melismata at 8:17 AM on September 20, 2018
posted by Melismata at 8:17 AM on September 20, 2018
I only got to see Midtown Market for the first time last smumer, on a trip back home. We drove from there straight to Ingebretsen's Scandinavian Gifts on the way home.
Last night I was thinking about how that must have seemed like a kind-of-lame afternoon to the kids at the time, but in retrospect it showed them that Minnesota has tons of different cultures all living together.
Out here in Rhode Island, the now-idle spinning mills have mostly been converted into mixed-use spaces already.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:23 AM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
Last night I was thinking about how that must have seemed like a kind-of-lame afternoon to the kids at the time, but in retrospect it showed them that Minnesota has tons of different cultures all living together.
Out here in Rhode Island, the now-idle spinning mills have mostly been converted into mixed-use spaces already.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:23 AM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
the tacos may be "regular-ass" but the huaraches are top of the heap
OK this right here is TRUE, those huaraches are so good. Los Ocampo in the middle, you can't miss it.
posted by clavicle at 9:01 AM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
OK this right here is TRUE, those huaraches are so good. Los Ocampo in the middle, you can't miss it.
posted by clavicle at 9:01 AM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
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posted by octothorpe at 12:59 PM on September 19, 2018