From strip mall to shining strip mall, America is now a nation of suburbs, a country where there are more jobs and people in the towns and villages that ring central cities than in the cities themselves.
There is no better symbol of this shift than the controversial, taxpayer- backed relocation of the merchandise arm of Sears Roebuck & Co. from Sears Tower, the world`s tallest office building and a symbol of Chicago`s urban might, to a self-effacing, low-rise development that sits amid cornfields and prairie grass in northwest suburban Hoffman Estates.
While the Tower scrapes the sky, the blue-mirror glass of the Merchandise Group headquarters all but blends into it. From afar, the five-building complex is practically indistinguishable from scores of anonymous office buildings that line the nation`s highways, resembling nothing so much as five shiny shoe boxes.
The complex was fully occupied Nov. 16 when the last of 5,000 employees moved in from the tower, which Sears still owns and where Sears, Roebuck & Co. will retain its corporate headquarters.
It will take years, if not decades, to fully assess the impact of a project of this magnitude; the 1.9-million-square-foot complex contains nearly half as much space as the tower. And it is part of a Sears-owned, 786-acre office and industrial park, which is more than twice as large as Chicago`s Loop.
Still, one can say that the development, despite superficial resemblances to the beloved old Sears plant on Chicago`s West Side, is like a typical suburban shopping mall, which pulsates with activity on the inside but presents a lifeless face to the outside. Like many suburban structures, the new Sears is architecturally bland and does little to engage the world around it.
At the same time, the interior of the complex seems far more inviting than Sears Tower and contains some spectacular big spaces. The most impressive is a 450-foot-long, 60-foot-wide concourse that is enlivened by natural light, a gurgling stream that turns into a roaring waterfall and elegantly designed nooks and crannies that provide a warmth the tower never had.
Designed by David Hansen of the Chicago architectural firm of Perkins & Will, the Merchandise Group headquarters carries the address 3333 Beverly Rd.-a deliberate attempt by Sears to evoke the aura of its sprawling West Side plant, where the company that predated today`s Merchandise Group was located at 3333 W. Arthington St.
The West Side plant was constructed in 1905 and was vacated when Sears moved to the tower in 1973 and 1974. But it had something that the tower, for all its powerful skyline presence, couldn`t match: A human scale that bred an esprit de corps among the Sears work force.
To be sure, the West Side plant wasn`t heaven on Earth, especially after the West Side riots of 1968. But its buildings shaped the urban space along the street instead of standing aloof from it, as Sears Tower does. And their massive character made clear that the plant was a great storehouse where Sears collected goods it would distribute around the world.
On the West Side, Sears employees often ran into co-workers as they walked from one building to another. The public was part of the mix, strolling through Sears` ornamental gardens flanking Homan Avenue. Indeed, Chicagoans still hold wedding ceremonies at the gardens, even though the West Side plant now sits empty.
In the tower, robots delivered the mail (they still do on a couple of floors) and the sleek, black facade projected the impression that this was solely a corporate headquarters where clerks shuffled paper, not a place where Sears buyers picked through everything from refrigerators to men`s underwear. Longtime friends who worked for Sears rarely saw one another because the tower`s elevator network often forced occupants to take two or three rides to get from one part of the building to another. Buyers who rode the same elevators wouldn`t discuss business there for fear that competitors, who also had access to the multi-tenant building, might hear them.
The result was a company where ideas didn`t flow freely and a corporate culture that gave new meaning to the word stodgy. As Wal-Mart and K-Mart overtook Sears as the nation`s top retailers, there was a palpable sense among Sears executives that the impersonal vertical environment of the tower had contributed, at least partly, to the company`s downfall.
It should come as no surprise, then, that Hansen sought to recapture the social interaction that once characterized the West Side plant and to escape the impression that the new Sears would be another monolith-the tower turned on its side, as it were.
Hansen split the giant complex into five buildings, arranging the long, boxlike structures in ”T”- and ”L”-shaped configurations. To create visual interest in the otherwise straightforward scheme, the architect framed gathering places-a conference and training center and a 1,800-seat cafeteria- with curving walls that resemble the sides of a grand piano. He clad the walls with white, ceramic-coated glass panels, further setting them off from the blue mirror glass.
Hansen`s plan allows the office buildings to frame the sky-lit space of the concourse, giving it the feel of a great interior street. And by locating the cafeteria, the conference center and a merchandise review center around the concourse, Hansen increased the likelihood that the space will become a crossroads-a suburban version of Sears` lost urban meeting place.
Does it work? And does it matter?
If you are a taxpaying resident of Illinois, it certainly does. At the behest of then-Gov. James Thompson, the state in 1989 pledged $66 million, including about $30 million in highway improvements, to keep Sears from moving out of state, as the company was threatening to do. To sweeten the pot, Hoffman Estates sold $181 million in bonds to reimburse Sears for the cost of buying land and installing public improvements, such as streets and sewers.
The result was a 786-acre business park called Prairie Stone, located approximately 35 miles northwest of Chicago`s Loop and occupying a site west of the intersection of the Northwest Tollway and Ill. Hwy. 59. Sears got the entire spread, which is zoned for office, light industrial, research and development and retail uses.
The 200-acre Merchandise Group complex is tucked into the northwest corner of the business park. In an attempt to recapture the ornamental gardens on the West Side, Sears will create a mile-long green belt that joins forest preserves to the north and south of the project. It also plans to set aside more than 200 acres in Prairie Stone for wetlands and prairie grasses.
As a driver streaks by on the Northwest Tollway, the first impression of the Merchandise Group complex is that it is a weak actor in the theater of the highway, especially in comparison to the richly articulated Ameritech Center office building to the east, designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Lohan Associates.
If that 1.3-million-square-foot structure looks like a chateau, spreading out with the palatial elegance of Versailles, Sears seems like just another corporate complex, offering little hint that it houses the nation`s third-largest retailer.
To some extent, the complex`s weak presence is understandable, given that Sears executives told Hansen that they wanted ”a Chevy, not a Cadillac”;
that future developments in Prairie Stone may obscure the view of the low-rise complex from the highway; and that the Sears office buildings are set back far from the tollway, while Ameritech is much closer.
But nearly all buildings, especially those supported by taxpayers, have a responsibility to participate in the public realm. And in Sears` case, there was a model for such participation: An ornamental tower that rose above the West Side plant, communicating clearly that Sears was the civic, as well as economic, center of its neighborhood.
To be sure, there are civic gestures in the 56-acre parcel, known as Park Center, which sits just south of the Merchandise Group headquarters. It is intended to provide a focal point for the development, with a village green for Hoffman Estates, Pace transportation center and a satellite education center of DeKalb-based Northern Illinois University.
The education center has a gabled glass tower that punctuates the suburban skyline in a way that the Merchandise Group headquarters does not. The education center also picks up on the curving roofline above the Sears concourse, making that element more visible than it is at Sears.
But so far, at least, Park Center seems more like a perk than a park-a way to attract companies to the real estate development rather than a real, live gathering place for the people of Hoffman Estates.
There is no urban grid of streets that defines this area-only a network of curving roads that meander the informality of a suburban subdivision. Indeed, the Merchandise Group headquarters is surrounded by a ring road straight out of Shopping Mall Design 101.
Still, as one approaches the Merchandise Group headquarters, its monolithic character breaks down, and the building reveals itself to be an understated, if unspectacular, presence in the landscape.
The undulating curves of the cafeteria and conference center create romantic rhythms that contrast beautifully with the four-square rationality of the office buildings. And while the mirror-glass curtain walls are a visual bore from afar, they work well at close range, resembling canvases that reflect changing patterns of clouds and sunlight, as well as the surrounding prairie landscape.
The landscape design for Prairie Stone, by the Chicago office of the Ann Arbor-based firm of Johnson, Johnson & Roy, represents a fascinating departure from the costly-to-maintain, manicured lawns of suburban business parks.
It will consist instead of native trees and grasses, including oaks and prairie plants. (More conventional blue-grass is already in place in the immediate vicinity of the Merchandise Group headquarters.) But since much of the landscape isn`t fully grown, it is difficult to tell if the innovative effort succeeds.
One is at a similar disadvantage in assessing the interior of the Merchandise Group headquarters. Its clean-lined modern spaces are free of Postmodernist pastiche or Deconstructivist dissonance. Yet it will take a while to know if the new horizontal layout has made Sears a more smoothly operating business.
Clearly, however, the layout is easier to navigate than the tower and provides more natural light to office workers. Its gathering places are smartly designed, and Hansen wisely located the cafeteria and a health and fitness center in spots that provide Sears employees with soothing vistas of manmade lakes.
The architect achieved his greatest success in the concourse. While the space has a superficial similarity to Helmut Jahn`s United Terminal at O`Hare International Airport, Hansen enriched and enlivened it with sculpturelike staircases and rough-cut stone walls that frame seating areas furnished with comfortable chairs.
This is a space full of urbanity, even if it is in the suburbs. Whether it will fulfill its role as a social crossroads-or become a grand, but lifeless, architectural gesture-will only become clear as Sears employees become familiar with the visual cues of the space and decide whether to make it their own.
But even if they do, the concourse will always be a private meeting place, strictly for use by Sears, not a public one, as was the case with the streets outside the West Side plant.
Moreover, the amenities provided by the Merchandise Group headquarters pale in contrast to the shops and excitement of downtown Chicago. Some Sears employees have complained that their new quarters are just great-if only they had been located in the Loop. One went so far as to call the complex the Prairie Stone Penitentiary.
Little wonder. Some Sears employees from the South Side and the south suburbs are making three- to four-hour round-trip commutes, a schedule that leaves them little time to enjoy great-looking concourses or health centers.
Sears deserves credit for organizing a ride-sharing program in which more than 2,000 of its 5,000 employees take car pools, van pools or some form of mass transit to work. In the traffic-choked northwest suburbs, where 9 out of 10 commuters typically drive alone to work, that is no small achievement.
But in the long run, Sears` work force likely will come to reflect the character of nearby, largely white communities as more people, especially workers on the South Side or in the south suburbs, take other jobs to avoid commuting.
Sears won`t be the first company in which this shift occurs, of course. It`s been happening since the 1950s as companies abandoned downtowns for isolated, self-sufficient suburban enclaves.
Sears reminds us anew of this emerging suburban America-and the price we continue to pay for it. Bland facades are bad enough. But if the faces of the people who work inside them don`t reflect the nation`s diversity, we will have lost something far more precious than giving up State Street for the strip mall.
