Sears closure in St. Paul presents opportunity for city

Twin Cities residents who want to shop at Sears soon will have only one option — the Mall of America.

In a bid to stay afloat, the once-mighty retailer has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and is closing dozens more stores nationwide, including one at Ridgedale and another in St. Paul, just north of downtown.

The Sears across from the state Capitol has been a fixture on Rice Street for more than a half-century. It first opened in 1963, when Sears, Roebuck and Co. was at the height of its reign over American retail.

In the parking lot outside the store, Consuela Cureton recalled going there as a kid growing up in St. Paul. More recently, she's used the auto shop to get her car fixed.

"I love it here. It's sad that they're going to be shutting down soon," Cureton said. "But I could understand why they would shut down, not getting a lot of business and everything."

Even after the St. Paul store ends its long run, Cureton will continue driving there, but just to park her car while she goes to work at the Minnesota Department of Transportation across the street.

The state of Minnesota rents 500 parking spaces among the acres of asphalt around Sears. A Department of Administration spokesperson says he has not received word of any plans to cancel that contract.

The impending shutdown of the location has again raised hopes of revitalizing the 17-acre parcel near the state Capitol. City Council Member Dai Thao, who represents the area, says Sears' struggles are unfortunate, but the store's closure presents a major opportunity for redevelopment.

"It's close to the politics of Minnesota, the Capitol, the Green Line," Thao said.

The council member said several groups have come to his office with ideas for the site, but he would not say who they are. Thao favors a mixed-use project that includes housing accessible to people of limited means.

"We have to build our city in an equitable way so we can all prosper," Thao said.

This isn't the first time the Sears property has been considered for redevelopment. In 2013 the retailer itself proposed adding homes and offices alongside its store. The plan never got off the ground as the company continued to face headwinds.

Sears' bankruptcy filing this week is the latest part of a rise-and-fall saga that had roots in Minnesota. Richard W. Sears was born in the southern Minnesota town of Stewartville during the Civil War.

In a 2010 interview with MPR News, former St. John's University history professor Annette Atkins said Sears was working at a railroad depot in Redwood Falls when an unwanted shipment of watches rolled in.

"Sears said, 'I wonder if I could sell them.' So he sold off that first batch in an eye blink. And I think that fired his imagination enough that within a few months he quit his job, he had gone to Minneapolis and he was running a watch business," Atkins said.

Sears would soon move the company to Chicago and hire a watch repairman named Alvah Roebuck. The two went on to found an empire that dominated American retail — first through an encyclopedic mail order catalog and then retail stores.

The bankruptcy filing does not bring an end to the 125-year-old business, but it severely diminishes its footprint. As recently as 2005, when it combined with Kmart, Sears Holdings operated approximately 2,200 stores.

After this latest round of closures nationwide there will be little more than 500 stores. While many Kmarts are closing nationally, no Minnesota Kmarts are on the current list.

MPR News' Gabriel Kwan, Precious Fondren and Cathy Wurzer contributed to this report.