Crain's: Why Sears sees salvation in servers

Photo by ZOL87

 It seems Sears has an idea for the store that they plan to close on 79th Street:

Parent Sears Holdings Corp. has formed a subsidiary, Ubiquity Critical Environments LLC, tasked with converting some of the more than 2,500 Sears and Kmart properties to data storage facilities with servers, chillers and backup generators. It also plans to top all of its buildings with telecommunications towers that would serve a wide range of needs, including, ironically, those of the e-commerce rivals that Sears is struggling to match.

First up: a Sears store along the Chicago Skyway that will close in July.

If you'd like to read the whole article, there may be registration required. Hopefully there will still be some room for another business or businesses to move in. We recently got an email about another business who could utilize this building if they were interesting in expansion: Mariano's.

Sears on 79th is now closing. What would YOU like to see happen here?

Photo by ZOL87

Recently we learned on Lee Bey's blog that the Sears store located @ 1134 E. 79th Street is closing. That's not the only store also the store located at 62nd/Western and the store at River Oaks Mall will also close. For the purposes of this post we will focus on the stores on Western and 79th Street.

For a while I had been thinking about writing a post about vacant lots and buildings that should be developed and what should be placed there. I figure this would be a good place to start let's find a use for these soon to be vacant stores on both 79th & 62nd/Western.

My first idea for both stores is this. Perhaps we could fit a Whole Foods Market in both of those stores. In fact 62nd/Western would be more likely than 79th street because a Whole Foods is already expected to be built in Hyde Park and I'm uncertain how much expansion they're going to do on this part of town. But 62nd/Western would be a good location on the Southwest part of town.

Also by possibly Worlee on our FB page it was suggested that the 79th Street Sears building could be used as a shopping center. He already has written about turning the area along Stony Island into a retail corridor almost like North/Clybourn for example. East 79th would be a great start in that direction.

BTW, if anyone has any areas they would like to add to what they would like to see developed, please feel free to share. Send an e-mail, post to our FB page, or send a tweet @thesixthward. Feel free to send pics as well.