Demolition work underway at the old Sears headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. (CBS) — An era ended in the northwest suburb of Hoffman Estates as workers began demolishing the old Sears, Roebuck and Co. headquarters on Thursday.

CBS News Skywatch flew to the scene as emergency crews began dismantling the 220,000-square-foot office building.

The property at 3333 Beverly Road in Hoffman Estates was purchased by Compass Datacenters in September of last year and a new data center is to be built on the site.

Sears first moved into the corporate headquarters in 1992 after receiving a series of incentives – reportedly worth $240 million – to lure it from its old corporate headquarters in the Sears Tower, now the Willis Tower, to the sprawling suburban office park.

Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018, and Transformco, a company formed to buy the company’s assets, put its headquarters in Hoffman Estates up for sale three years later.

Sears: A story intertwined with Chicago’s history

Sears, Roebuck and Co. traces its roots back to Chicago in the 1880s, when watch dealer Richard W. Sears and watchmaker Alvah C. Roebuck started a mail-order business. Originally selling watches and jewelry, the Sears catalog quickly evolved into an Amazon by the turn of the century, selling clothing, bicycles, sewing machines, sporting goods, musical instruments and guns, among other items, according to the Sears Archives website.

In 1895, clothing manufacturer Julius Rosenwald became a partner in Sears. Rosenwald is considered to be the person who developed the business strategies that helped Sears boom – sales rose from $750,000 to $50 million between 1895 and 1907, according to Sears archives.

Rosenwald was also known for putting the customer first, with a promise of “satisfaction guaranteed or your money back,” according to Sears archives. He is also known as the founder of the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and for his philanthropic efforts – notably establishing thousands of schools for rural black youth in the South.

The first Sears store opened in 1925 under the direction of General Robert E. Wood, Brittanica reports. This store was located in the Sears Merchandise Building at the company’s headquarters near Homan Avenue and Arthington Street on Chicago’s West Side.

In 1928, three more stores were opened in Chicago – at Lawrence and Wolcott Avenue in Ravenswood, at 79th Street and Kenwood Avenue in Avalon Park, and at 62nd Street and Western Avenue in Chicago Lawn.

All of these stores remained in business until relatively recently. The Western Avenue and 79th Street stores both closed in 2013—the 79th Street store is now a self-storage business, while the Western Avenue store was demolished in 2020. The Lawrence Avenue store closed in 2016 and was redeveloped into apartments and a DeVry University campus.

Stores quickly opened elsewhere in the country, too — and by 1931, retail sales exceeded mail-order sales, Brittanica noted. Sears benefited enormously from the post-World War II economic boom and was not overtaken as the nation’s largest retailer until the 1980s, when it was dethroned by future parent company Kmart and later Walmart, Brittanica noted.

In 1973, Sears moved into Chicago’s Sears Tower, which was the tallest building in the world when it opened. Nearly two decades later, Sears was offered the largest tax break ever for an Illinois company to move to Hoffman Estates – a move that did not pay off as hoped for the northwest suburban village, according to a 2020 Daily Herald and ProPublica review.

Sears and Kmart merged in 2004. According to published reports, Sears’ stock price peaked at $195.18 per share in 2007, but then began to spiral downward—and was no longer profitable by 2010. Stores across the country closed one after another.By summer 2017, 1,250 locations will remaincompared to 3,400 at the beginning of 2006.

The last Sears store in Illinois, at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, closed in November 2021. Now there are only 11 Sears stores.