Unlike some other recent Sears closures I've seen, someone (who knows if it was Sears themselves or the mall) actually took down the Sears signage after this store closed, so Spirit just had labelscars to deal with here. It's a bit weird to see Spirit taking over such a large building, but unsurprisingly, they only used a very small portion of the old Sears space for their store.
Wow, it's great to see some Sears on this blog even if it's a former Sears. That's interesting that this store had the underlined Sears logo. I'm pretty sure none of the Houston area stores got that sign. All the ones here had the familiar 1984 or 1994 logos here in recent times except for a couple that got the most recent logo. Well, there was the Midtown/Downtown Houston Sears which still had 1960s-era signage when it closed a 3-4 years ago. Link: https://s.hdnux.com/photos/60/53/17/12760016/7/rawImage.jpg
ReplyDeleteIt seems like the Sears here in Houston which closed in the last couple of years left their signs up. Some of the Sears that closed a few years before that (pre-bankruptcy) did remove their signs at some point. One oddity is the Mall of the Mainland Sears. That store operated under reduced hours for quite a few years prior to it closing in 2019 I think it was (it was a store operating out of a mostly dead mall). Due to the limited hours of the store, they rarely turned the lights on the outdoor signs unless they had extended hours like around Christmas. Anyway, after the store closed, the signs that were left were turned on at night! It was strange that they finally chose to turn the lights on when the store was no longer there! The sign at that store is gone now since the store is in the process of being turned into a massive gym that's moving from the former Foley's/Macy's at the mall.
My local former Sears, the Willowbrook Mall Sears, is also now a Spirit Halloween just like it was last year. Here's Mike from HHR's tour of that Sears last year: https://houstonhistoricretail.com/2020/10/31/the-ghost-of-sears-past/
Yeah, this certainly seems to be one of the rarest Sears logos to see in recent years -- this is the only one I know of that had it consistently (though I've seen it in other stores on only some of the signage). I should have mentioned -- this store closed at the end of 2019.
DeleteLooks like that Sears Spirit is quite different from this one -- much larger, and it actually used the mall entrance!