Planning Site selection Sears, Roebuck & Co. had occupied
an office complex on Chicago's west side since 1906. The existing offices were inadequate by 1966, prompting Sears executives to begin searching for a new site. By 1969, Sears was the largest retailer in the world, with about 350,000 employees. Sears executives quickly determined that a new headquarters complex in the suburbs was infeasible, since it would require relocating about 7,000 employees. Instead, Sears executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of
Chicago's Loop. Sears asked its outside counsel, Arnstein, Gluck, Weitzenfeld & Minow (now known as
Saul Ewing LLP) to suggest a location. The firm consulted with local and federal authorities and the applicable law, then offered Sears two options. The first option was the
Goose Island area northwest of the Loop, but Sears's vice president of real estate, Matthew J. Stacom, rejected this proposal. The other was a two-block area in the Loop, bounded by Franklin Street on the east, Jackson Boulevard on the south, Wacker Drive on the west, and Adams Street on the north. Though the site was more centrally located, it was also relatively small, with about . Bernard Feinberg, Albert I. Rubenstein, and Philip Teinowitz had assembled that site over the previous five years, but they had failed to acquire a neighboring lot from bus company
Greyhound Lines. Feinberg, Rubenstein, and Teinowitz then bought options for three adjacent lots. Under the terms of each option, unless the three men were able to acquire at least one of the lots within 90 days, all three options would be forfeited. Sears purchased 15 buildings from 100 owners and paid the
government of Chicago $2.7 million (equivalent to $ in ) for the block of Quincy Street that was to be closed down.
Design process Sears executives estimated that their new building would need about , split into 70 stories with each or 60 stories with each. SOM was also the lead structural engineer, and
Jaros, Baum & Bolles provided MEP engineering. This allowed Sears to occupy the large lower stories, while providing more conventional office space that could be rented out on the upper stories. The firm of Saphier, Lerner, Schindler was responsible for determining Sears's space requirements and designing furniture for the company. As Sears continued to offer optimistic growth projections, the height of the proposed tower also increased. however, the area's
minimum safe altitude would need to be raised by if the building was just taller. Plans for the tower were announced on July 27, 1970. The building would contain 109 stories as measured from Wacker Drive and 110 stories as measured from Franklin Street. This would make Sears's new tower the tallest in the world, as measured by roof height, although New York City's under-construction
World Trade Center Twin Towers would have a taller antenna. By that November, Spencer, White & Prentis Inc. was excavating a trench around the site, measuring deep and across. The contractors then built a
slurry wall within the trench, made of concrete and reinforced steel. Workers used steel bracing to prevent the slurry wall from collapsing inward, then used
caissons to drill 201 holes into the ground. They also rerouted a sewer that had run underneath Quincy Street, which was to be closed permanently as part of the tower's construction. The project employed 2,000 workers. To accelerate the building's construction, a concrete plant was built in the building's basement, allowing workers to pour one-third of a concrete floor every day. Contractors built two temporary kitchens on the site for workers, and telephone and loudspeaker systems were installed on every floor to allow workers to communicate. In addition, contractors installed temporary generators that could supply up to simultaneously; during the winter, most of this electricity was used to heat the exposed steel beams on the lowest five floors.
Broadcast-signal controversy By late 1971,
Chicagoland residents and broadcasters had raised concerns that the new Sears Tower would disrupt television broadcasts. According to one estimate, the building would obstruct television signals for 15 percent of Chicagoans and cause "double images" for another 20 percent, primarily affecting communities to the northwest and southeast. In response to these concerns, Sears started researching methods to reduce the tower's effect on broadcast signals.
Variety magazine stated that the Sears Tower did not interfere with broadcasts on its own, since several shorter towers in the Loop also interfered with broadcast signals. Nonetheless, the Illinois Citizens' Committee for Broadcasting filed a formal complaint with the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in February 1972. The first lawsuit against the building was filed by the state attorney in neighboring
Lake County on March 17, 1972. A second suit was filed on March 28 in Cook County Circuit Court by the villages of
Skokie,
Northbrook, and
Deerfield, Illinois. Sears filed motions to dismiss the Lake and
Cook County lawsuits, which both sought to cap the building at 67 stories. and the tower's construction continued, even as decisions on both lawsuits were delayed. At the end of the month, the company applied for permission to increase the building's height limit by and install a new antenna, although eight of Chicago's ten television stations criticized the plan. On May 17, 1972, Judge LaVerne Dickson, Chief of the
Lake County Circuit Court, dismissed the suit, saying, "I find nothing that gives television viewers the right to reception without interference." By then, the building had reached the 58th story. The Lake County attorney appealed to the
Illinois Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the FCC declined to act on the height dispute on the grounds it did not have jurisdiction. The FAA approved the antennas atop the tower in June 1972, and the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the previous rulings by Lake and Cook County circuit courts at the end of the month. Work was temporarily paused that July due to a
labor strike. The next month, Sears formally announced plans for broadcast antennas on the tower's roof, and the company offered to spend $5 million (equivalent to $ in ) to help relocate broadcast stations to the Sears Tower. and the
United States Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the Seventh Circuit's decision that November.
Topping-out and completion In November 1972, the Sears Tower became Chicago's tallest building, At the time, the Sears project employed 1,600 workers in three shifts; one worker had been killed during the project so far. Local television stations
WTTW and
WLS-TV were planning to install temporary broadcast antennas atop the tower when the steel frame was completed. The tower's superstructure had reached the 100th floor in February 1973, at which point it was taller than the
Empire State Building in New York City. The building was
topped out on May 3, 1973. The day before the event, the
Chicago Tribune editorial board wrote: "Move aside, New York. After tomorrow, when schoolchildren dream of big buildings, they'll no longer think of you and the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center." The frame was still not technically complete, as three to four stories remained to be built. One week after the ceremony, four workers died after an elevator shaft caught fire. A fifth worker died after falling from the tower in an unrelated incident four days later. Work was halted again that June due to a labor strike, and Sears began moving furniture into the building that month. The construction cost was about US$150 million, (equivalent to $ in ). Despite the size of the project, Sears executives said the building could not accommodate Sears' annual shareholder meetings, and the company continued to rent space in other structures.
20th century Opening and early years The first Sears employees began moving into the tower during the weekend of September 9, 1973. Flashing
beacons on the building's roof, the first to be installed at any building in Chicago, were activated the same month. Upon the tower's opening, broadcasters at the
John Hancock Center, Chicago's second-tallest building, had to decide whether to relocate to the Sears Tower. Two television stations decided to relocate. Six other stations remained at the John Hancock Center, citing a study which showed that relocating to the Sears Tower would provide only minimal benefits. Documents released in late 1973 indicated that the Sears Tower would cause much more interference than either Sears or the television stations had disclosed. followed by WTTW the next month. By March 1974, three-fourths of the space in the building was occupied; Sears had leased the upper stories to tenants such as
Goldman Sachs,
Northwest Industries, and
Schiff Hardin. A
mobile sculpture by
Alexander Calder was dedicated in the lobby in October 1974. Sears' optimistic growth projections were not realized; instead, in late 1974, the company fired 500 workers, about seven percent of the 7,000 Sears employees that worked in the tower. Competition beyond its traditional rivals such as
Montgomery Ward arose from emerging retail giants including
Kmart,
Kohl's, and
Walmart. As a result of a surplus of office space that emerged in the 1980s, the tower did not draw as many tenants as projected and so stood half-vacant for a decade.
Renovation and relocation In February 1984, Sears announced that it would renovate the building to attract visitors to the lower floors. At the time, 6,500 Sears employees occupied more than half of the building, taking up the lowest 48 stories. Sears announced in 1988 that it would sell the tower and relocate its merchandising division from the lower half of the building. The company wanted to earn at least $1 billion from the sale of the Sears Tower, so it offered multiple concessions to potential buyers, including a guarantee that Sears would continue to pay rent on the lower half of the building until tenants were found for these stories. Four large firms were negotiating to buy the tower by July 1989. The company had difficulties finding a buyer, in part because the lower stories were too large for many potential tenants. Sears nearly sold the tower to Canadian company
Olympia & York, but the deal was canceled in September 1989 because the two firms could not agree on who would pay the property taxes. In November 1989, Sears decided to instead refinance the building. The next year, Sears took out a mortgage loan on the tower for $850 million from
MetLife and
AEW Capital Management, with MetLife as the holder of the mortgage note; the loan would
mature in 2005. Just two years later, Sears began moving its own offices out of the building to a new campus in
Hoffman Estates, Illinois, which was completed in 1995. As the maturation of the mortgage approached, Sears renegotiated the loan in 1994. The negotiations resulted in an agreement where Sears would no longer be liable for the $850 million loan, although it would only nominally own the building, while AEW and MetLife effectively had total control. As part of the 1994 agreement, AEW and MetLife would be able to take official ownership of the building in 2003.
21st century Trizec had projected that the Sears Tower would quickly reach a value of $1 billion. These projections were not met, with the tower facing the same vacancy and other problems it saw under Sears, although Trizec made somewhat successful efforts to attract new tenants. Following the
September 11 attacks, two of the largest tenants, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, immediately announced plans for vacating 300,000 ft2 of space. In 2003, Trizec sold its holdings of the tower to MetLife for $9 million.
Syndicate ownership In March 2004, MetLife announced that it would sell the building to a group of investors, including
Joseph Chetrit,
Joseph Moinian,
Lloyd Goldman,
Joseph Cayre, and
Jeffrey Feil of New York, as well as American Landmark Properties of
Skokie, Illinois. The quoted price was $840 million, with $825 million held in a mortgage. Two years later, in February 2007, the Sears Tower's owners obtained a $780 million loan from
UBS. At the time, UBS valued the tower at $1.2 billion. Since 2007, the owners had considered plans for the construction of a hotel on the north side of Jackson Boulevard, between Wacker Drive and Franklin Street, close to the entrance of the observation deck, above the tower's underground parking garage. According to the tower's owners, the second building was considered in the original design. The plan was eventually cancelled as city zoning did not permit construction of such a tall building in that location. In February 2009, the owners announced they were considering a plan to paint the structure silver, an idea that was later abandoned. It was hoped that a new, silver, paint-job would "rebrand" the building and highlight its advances in energy efficiency for an estimated cost of $50 million. Although Sears'
naming rights expired in 2003, the building continued to be called the Sears Tower for several years, despite multiple changes in ownership. In March 2009, London-based insurance broker
Willis Group Holdings agreed to lease a portion of the building and obtained the naming rights. On July 16, 2009, the building was officially renamed the Willis Tower. By 2011, the building's owners were considering selling a partial ownership stake, or even the entire building, to an investor. The next year,
United Airlines announced it would move its corporate headquarters from
77 West Wacker Drive to the Willis Tower.
Blackstone ownership By March 2015, the Willis Tower was being marketed at a price of $1.5 billion. The same month, the
Blackstone Group purchased the tower for a reported $1.3 billion, the highest price ever paid for a property in the U.S. outside of New York City. Blackstone announced a $500 million renovation in January 2017, which would include the construction of the Catalog, a six-story commercial complex, replacing a plaza on Jackson Boulevard and the entrance on Wacker Drive. Architectural firm
Gensler designed the renovation. A rooftop terrace was built atop the Catalog, and the building's
HVAC systems were overhauled. The building's owners installed artwork by
Olafur Eliasson,
Jacob Hashimoto, and other artists. To fund these improvements, in February 2017, Blackstone obtained a $1 billion loan from a group of banks including
Goldman Sachs. The new loan replaced $750 million of
CMBS debt that was maturing. The following year, because of the increasing costs of the renovation, Blackstone received a new $1.3 billion loan from
Deutsche Bank and
Barclays. The Wacker Drive "Lunchbox" entrance was demolished in early 2018 to make way for the Catalog. A steel globe next to the entrance, manufactured by the Poblocki Sign Company and installed in 2010, was relocated to
Elmhurst, Illinois. A private club on the 66th and 67th stories opened in June 2018. The club included a restaurant named Craftsman and a lounge named Frame, both of which exclusively served the tower's tenants, as well as a public restaurant known as the East Room. That September, Urbanspace announced that it would operate a
food hall on the lower stories. In 2020, insurance company
Aon had proposed acquiring
Willis Towers Watson (which had succeeded the Willis Group as the building's owner), prompting speculation that the building could be renamed again. The planned merger was canceled in 2021 following an antitrust lawsuit from the
United States Department of Justice. The building's renovation was completed in May 2022. At the time, although the Willis Tower was nearly 85 percent leased, the number of tenants and visitors entering the building had decreased significantly since 2019, in part because of the
COVID-19 pandemic in Chicago.
Incidents In June 2006,
seven men were arrested by the
FBI and charged with plotting to destroy the tower. Deputy FBI Director John Pistole described their plot as "more aspirational than operational". The case went to court in October 2007. After three trials, five of the suspects were convicted and two acquitted. The alleged leader of the group,
Narseal Batiste, was sentenced to years in prison. In response to the perceived threat of an attack, the building's largest tenant at this time,
Ernst & Young, moved to North Wacker Drive in early 2009. In May 2020, heavy rains caused three of the basement levels to flood, knocking out power to the building. This also resulted in many TV and radio stations going off the air. == Architecture ==