Most of those are old and rotting turkeys, for which we've already paid way too much, and their stench is such that nobody even wants to properly dispose of them. But Sears is a fresh turkey, one we have yet to max out the city's credit card on. It's not a great turkey, but it sure is a big old one.
The Sears building was born in the economic euphoria that brought on the great depression. Needed or not, the builders of this great big turkey were not about to admit their error and happily occupied their upper floor offices into posterity or at least retirement. By the time I worked there in the late '60s the executives were "working" 3 day weeks and didn't know, never mind cared, of an upstart storekeeper from Bentonville. I have fond memories of the employee cafeteria but not it's food and the employee store a floor below. But even then it was obvious this was a corporation living on borrowed time. When I left in '69 I expected Sears had maybe 10 years to live, badly underestimating the inertia a massive enterprise can have. Sears added on even more warehouse space, a new dock, and even a new parking ramp before the end came.
The '80s were not kind to old men like Sears. Having built the Sears Tower in Chicago, a questionable expenditure to start with, Sears soon had to hock it to survive. Sears killed off it's roots, the catalog operation, then had to expensively buy Land's End to replace it. Small town Sears franchisees were starved, and are now being expensively replaced. Meanwhile the beast of Bentonville grew all powerful, narrowly focused on Sear's customer base while Sears flounders. Sears abandoned this midwestern flagship complex on Lake Street just as immigrant small businesses started to bring life back to this Boulevard of Broken Dreams After a succession of questionable deals our once fair city has somehow acquired ownership of this great big turkey.
At present our once fair city proposes to dispose of this great big turkey by stuffing it with several million of our tax dollars and giving it to one of the city's favorite developers. Now the normal method of disposing of even much smaller properties abandoned to our government is sale at auction to the highest bidder. This normal way of doing business might make the acquisition a bit more expensive for the favored developer, but it would yield the highest return for the citizen taxpayers of Minneapolis. Does not the City of Minneapolis exist to serve it's citizens rather than Ryan, the Motorola/E.F. Johnson/GE monopoly, Ford, etc..?
About now someone from the ghost of MCDA will quip that this great big old turkey of a Sears building is so gross and unpalatable that no buyer will pay to consume it. This perverse logic flies in the face of the hordes of businesses that have taken advantage of bargain priced center city properties like this. It costs over $100/ square foot to build new commercial space in this metro area; For $10 or so a square foot lots of growing businesses will overlook Lake Street and this old building's problems and gobble it up. When we can peddle this great big turkey and give $10,000,000 or so back to the city treasury who needs favored developers?
What if we can't find a buyer? This great big turkey isn't going anywhere, and even if it's tower comes crashing down it won't go anywhere that will hurt anyone. Just let it sit there, and in the meantime our city attorney's can quit worrying about old ladies with peeling paint. and dig their teeth into this case. There's no statute of limitations on property transactions, and in the many "transactions" this property has gone through there were surely some defects that would devolve ownership back to a party with assets, like Sears... After we hit them up for a decade or so of back taxes they might decide it's a good location for a store and open one there...
roasting yet another turkey from Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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