Holiday traditions come and go, but for many Chicagoans of a certain age, Christmas started when the “Wish Book” arrived in the mailbox from Sears, Roebuck and Co.
Wall Street counted on Eddie Lampert, a wealthy investor, to cut costs and squeeze profits from the vast real estate holdings of the two companies. There was talk at the time about the fresh-faced financier becoming the next Warren Buffett. Lampert was still running Sears in 2018, when it filed for bankruptcy to shed debt, bad leases and unprofitable stores. He brought the remains of the business out of bankruptcy in 2019. It had just 223 Sears and 202 Kmart stores remaining nationwide.
In Chicago, Sears has no stores, but it lives on in other ways. Thousands of Chicagoans worked at Sears and still rely on retirement benefits that have been threatened along with the rest of the company’s financial obligations. Young people often don’t know that the large, locally based companies, Allstate and Discover, were among the businesses spun off from the retail giant in its heyday, as was the highly successful Coldwell Banker real estate franchise.