Sears plans to sell headquarters in Chicago suburb
Sears is putting its sprawling 273-acre corporate headquarters in Hoffman Estates up for sale after 30 years of calling the northwest suburb its home.
Transformco, parent company of the struggling retailer, which has been downsizing operations and corporate staff for several years, confirmed its intent Thursday to market the property early next year.
“These changes have reduced our needs for a corporate campus that was built 30 years ago for the needs of a more centralized business,” Transformco spokesman Larry Costello said in a statement. “We are exploring development opportunities for the Hoffman Estates property that enhance its value for both associates based there and the broader Hoffman Estates community.”
Costello said employees are operating under a hybrid structure during the pandemic, with a mix of in-office and remote work. He declined to say how many employees are based out of Hoffman Estates, or where a future headquarters may be located.
The Hoffman Estates campus features a 2.3 million-square-foot corporate office and 273 acres, including 100 acres of undeveloped land. It was home to more than 4,000 Sears employees as recently as 2017, according to company filings.
Once the nation’s largest retailer, Sears has struggled in recent years, declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018 with billions of dollars in debt. In 2019, Transformco, an entity controlled by former Sears CEO and its largest shareholder, Edward Lampert, bought the retailer and 425 stores in a bankruptcy auction.
Since then, Sears has continued to reduce its retail footprint, closing its last full-service Illinois department store at Woodfield Mall on Nov. 14.
There are 11 smaller-format Sears Hometown stores in Illinois, which are primarily operated by independent dealers or franchisees of an affiliate of Transformco, Costello said. Nationwide, there are more than 300 large and small format Sears and Kmart stores still in operation, he said.
Sears had 4,411 employees in Hoffman Estates and its Loop satellite office as of January 2017, according to state filings. In June 2017, Sears told the Tribune it had fallen short of the 4,250 employees needed to remain eligible for state tax credits. Sears has since announced multiple rounds of corporate layoffs in Hoffman Estates.
Founded in 1886 as the R.W. Sears Watch Co. in Minneapolis, the company moved to Chicago the following year, and a budding retail giant was born.
When Sears Tower opened in 1973, it was the world’s tallest building, a fitting corporate home for the nation’s largest retailer. Sears left its namesake home in 1992, moving its corporate headquarters to Hoffman Estates and selling the tower two years later. In 2009, the name of the building was changed to Willis Tower as part of the deal for the London-based insurance firm to lease office space there.
Sears is not the only corporate mainstay to pull up stakes recently and put its suburban campus on the market.
Last month, insurance giant Allstate reached an agreement to sell its longtime headquarters in unincorporated Northbrook for $232 million to an industrial developer that plans to turn the 232-acre corporate campus into a massive logistics facility.
