Abandoned Retail - Sears - St. Paul, MN
This way to Sears! Oh yeah, that's right... The St. Paul, MN, Sears department store closed their historic Rice Street location, at 6 p.m. Sunday, January 6, 2019. Well, 6 p.m. was the plan, but the store actually closed at noon that day. When it closed, that left only two remaining Sears locations in Minnesota (and zero Kmarts). The last two Sears locations were at Ridgedale Center in Minnetonka, and the Mall of America. Which shouldn't be allowed to exist. Both of those Sears stores would close by the end of March, 2019. But for now, I'm only concerning myself with the former Sears store at 425 Rice St., in St. Paul, MN. Built by architect Victor Gruen (reputed as the "father of the American shopping mall"), and opened in 1963, the St. Paul Sears was known for its modernist design, which looks very dated today. It also looks very similar to the still standing and still vacant Sears store at the Brookdale Mall . Which I wrote about several years ago, and it