USA TODAY International Edition
This Sears has front-row seat as fate unfolds
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – The Sears store sits modestly at the corner of two nondescript streets in White Plains, New York, pinning its hopes on the foot traffic sauntering through the Galleria, a local mall that twins the flailing anchor with Macy’s at the other end. ❚ But unlike every other Sears that has studded the American landscape for decades, this three-story concrete hulk in Westchester County is two blocks from the U.S. bankruptcy court that will decide the fate of the storied retail giant.
From its perch in a quintessential American suburb, this Sears is close enough to see its own funeral or resurrection. The 24 giant tiles atop its main entrance at South Lexington Avenue and, yes, Main Street are stained with vertical lines of rust, which look oddly like dried tears.
The company has struggled to hang on and now awaits word on whether a revised proposal to save the company from ESL Investments, Sears Holdings chairman and largest investor Eddie Lampert’s hedge fund, is deemed acceptable by the debtors. That would save the company from liquidation. Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based Sears held an auction this week for the company’s assets.
“The presence of a federal bankruptcy court near Sears has an irony,” said Roger Panetta, visiting professor of history at Fordham University, and author of “Westchester: The American Suburb.” “The city has been a barometer for the nature of the suburbs. I don’t feel either pride or dismay.”
The most recent court meeting in White Plains – a city previously best known to Sears shoppers as the site of one of Gen. George Washington’s Revolutionary War defeats, the Battle of White Plains – was a conference status on Tuesday. Most seats were taken; if bankruptcy law had a Super Bowl, this is it.
The 227,316-square-foot Sears has been at that location since 2003, replacing a J.C. Penney, according to the Galleria’s marketing and business development manager Ty Peterson.
Where Sears was for decades before that move now houses a Walmart. The 126-year-old retailer has been criticized for failing to embrace the shift to digital retail and refresh its merchandise. The lackluster online shopping presence and fusty product lines kept younger shoppers away; meanwhile, Walmart, founded in Arkansas in 1962, made that shift.
Both chains saw their futures blossoming in the suburbs – bedroom communities as American as the cars that once upon a time shoppers drove to get there. For years, White Plains was frozen in this amber – easily commutable to New York City, predominantly white, with the serenity of a mid- to late 20th-century middle class. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, wife of former first son John Kennedy Jr., are from there.
Today, White Plains has close to 60,000 residents with a median income of $87,550 with healthy-sized Hispanic and African-American communities, according to the U.S. Census. What was once a sleepy ’burb now gleams with high-rise office towers and condo buildings.
Lucy Medina has watched Sears tumble. Not an employee of Sears, she’s a hairdresser in the salon in the White Plains store.
Medina has no plan if the store closes and, with it, the salon.
“People have to work,” she said. “I’m crossing my fingers.”