Sears In 1925, with the rate of automobile registrations outpacing available retail parking,
Sears' vice-president of factories and retail—
Robert E. Wood—decided that the company's new big stores would be built away from
city centres, and instead in low-density areas where costs were cheaper yet car-owning customers could still reach. Sears Crosstown and
Sears-Pico were among the first new constructions beholden to this edict. Sears scouted the site in secret to prevent price gouging by locals if it was learned in advance that the retail giant was interested in property. In the late 1920s, the chosen location was in a
suburban neighborhood from
Downtown. The building was originally dual-purposed as both the city's first Sears retail store and a catalog order plant. The original
groundbreaking took place on February 21, 1927, and after only 180 days of construction, Mayor
Rowlett Paine—who had allocated (equivalent to about $ million in ) to build
streetcar tracks specially for servicing the building—cut the ribbon on August 27, 1927. The very first day of business saw almost 30,000 shoppers. At the building's busiest, as many as 45,000 catalog orders left each day. By 1981, the building was called Sears Crosstown, named for the intersecting streetcar lines. The first two floors were Sears retail, while the third was an
outlet store; higher floors were concerned with the business of fulfilling
catalog orders. In August 1983, employees were first informed about the impending closure of the retail store, though the surplus-goods outlet in the basement stayed open. Sears closed the distribution center completely in 1993, selling the building in 2000 to Memtech LLC for (equivalent to about $M in ).
Renovation Around 2007,
Holliday Fenoglio Fowler listed the vacant building for sale, hoping to capitalize on the trend of renovating former Sears buildings into
mixed-use development (as successfully done in
Boston,
Dallas, and
Seattle). That same year, a group of anonymous Memphis investors doing business as Crosstown LLC bought the building for (equivalent to about $M in ). Crosstown LLC have been described as "local investors who bought the property for civic reasons [and] are not involved for the publicity." Crosstown LLC brought in a team of developers (the Sears Crosstown Development Team) to redesign and renovate the building. Dr. Todd Richardson was an assistant professor of art history at the
University of Memphis, brought in as team lead. He was joined by McLean Wilson, vice president of
Kemmons Wilson Inc.; Bologna Consultants; Carkuff Interiors;
architectural firms of
Looney Ricks Kiss and
DIALOG; construction firm Grinder Taber & Grinder; and the marketing firm of Doug Carpenter & Associates. Richardson later admitted that the team originally gave the project a five percent chance of success.
Structural Approximately of space was earmarked for excision to provide the building with
lightwells and
atriums, and the remaining one million to be divided into for commercial use and for residential. Bologna Consultants determined that though the building was structurally sound, and
asbestos wasn't a large concern, earthquake-girding and restoring the hundreds of windows would need addressing. In 2015, Richardson enumerated some of the work performed. Already, of concrete, and of metal had been removed from the site. 3,200 windowpanes; 400,000 bricks; and of suspended scaffolding were earmarked for removal, while of brick joints were planned for restoration. The renovation of the building occurred from 2015–2017. The brick façade was left in-place.
Realization Groundbreaking for the renovation was on February 21, 2015. Metal from the Sears
heating system was melted to form the new
cornerstone. After two years of construction costing , Crosstown Concourse had its grand opening on August 19, 2017—almost 90 years after the building's original debut. The mayors
of Memphis (
Jim Strickland) and
of Shelby County (
Mark Luttrell) were in attendance. At 96% capacity, Crosstown Concourse had over 200 residents, 41 tenant businesses, and 700+ new jobs for Memphis.
Crosstown Concourse At 11:55a.m. on February 25, 2022, an accidental fire broke out at Pizzeria Trasimeno on the east side of the building.
Memphis Fire Services extinguished the fire in 16 minutes, which caused no structural damage and an estimated of damage to building contents. The building was evacuated for 50 minutes, and there were no injuries reported. ==Tenants==