The Midtown Exchange is a historic structure and mixed-use building located in the Midtown neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It is the second-largest building in Minnesota in terms of leasable space, after the Mall of America. It was built in 1928 as a retail and mail-order catalog facility for Sears, which occupied it until 1994. It lay vacant until 2005, when it was transformed into multipurpose commercial space. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Sears, Roebuck and Company Mail-Order Warehouse and Retail Store.
The first phase of the building, along Elliot Avenue and Lake Street, was built in 1928. It was expanded in 1929, 1964, and 1979, resulting in 1.2 million square feet (110,000 m²) of space. A central tower along Elliot Avenue rises 16 floors to 211 feet (64 m).
Midtown Global Market
After Sears closed the site in 1994, it laid vacant as development proposals came and went. The city of Minneapolis acquired the site in 2001 and sold the 1979 expansion portion in 2002 to be used by the neighboring Abbott Northwestern Hospital as a parking ramp. Two years later, Ryan Companies was given exclusive development rights to the site. The resulting plan divided the structure into a mixed-use site with about 300 residential units, plus office and retail space.
In 2004, Allina Health announced plans to move their corporate headquarters to the building, taking up most of the allotted office space.[2] Much of the residential space is known as the Chicago Lofts located on floors 9-16 and Midtown Exchange Apartments located on floors 2-8. The building also includes the Midtown Global Market, which is home to a variety of small independently owned restaurants, cafes, and specialty grocers, and hosts community programs including music, dance, and children's activities. A prototype Sheraton Hotel was built in the former Sears parking lot. The building and hotel have direct access to the Midtown Greenway.
The area around the Midtown Exchange building was heavily affected by civil disorder during the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis–Saint Paul that began in late May 2020, with several nearby buildings entirely destroyed by arson.[3] Residents of the Midtown Exchange fended off threats to the building from rioting an looting by patrolling the area with baseball bats.[4] The Sheraton Hotel was used as a temporary sanctuary by activists for unhoused persons, but they were later evicted after several safety incidents,[5] and the hotel remains shuttered as of July 2021.
Other buildings
Midtown Exchange has a sister building called the Landmark Center in Boston, Massachusetts. Both were built in the 1920s and their designs are nearly identical. Both are former Sears warehouses that have since been renovated into commercial space.[6]
The North Loop, also commonly called The Warehouse District, is a neighborhood of the Central community of Minneapolis, Minnesota that was Minneapolis’s main commercial district during the city's years as a midwestern shipping hub. Although only a little commercial shipping is still done in the neighborhood, the historic warehouses still dominate the neighborhood. Some of these buildings have been repurposed into restaurants, shops, and apartments.
Downtown Newark is the Central Business District of Newark in Essex County, New Jersey, United States.
Lake Street is a major east-west thoroughfare between 29th and 31st streets in Minneapolis, Minnesota United States. From its western most end at the city's limits, Lake Street reaches the Chain of Lakes, passing over a small channel linking Bde Maka Ska and Lake of the Isles, and at its eastern most end it reaches the Mississippi River. In May 2020, the Lake Street corridor suffered extensive damage during local unrest over the murder of George Floyd. In August of the same year, city officials designated East Lake Street as one of seven cultural districts to promote racial equity, preserve cultural identity, and promote economic growth.
The Merchandise Building is a loft conversion of a former warehouse located in downtown Toronto on Dalhousie Street, near the campus of Toronto Metropolitan University and the Toronto Eaton Centre. Built in various stages from 1910 to 1949 for the Simpson's department store, and later owned by Sears Canada after Simpson's demise, the Merchandise Building at over 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2) is one of the largest buildings by floor area in downtown Toronto. It is an example of the early 20th-century industrial Chicago School architectural style.
The Kales Building is a high-rise apartment building in downtown Detroit, Michigan. It is located 76 West Adams at the northeast corner of Adams Avenue West and Park Avenue, across from Grand Circus Park, in the Foxtown neighborhood, just north of Downtown. The building was designed by Albert Kahn and constructed in 1914, and stands at 18 floors, with one basement floor, for a total of 19 floors in height. It was originally named the Kresge Building and it was given its current name in 1930. Kahn went beyond the typical Chicago School and styled the Kales Building with a clean-lined detail façade with Neo-classical and Renaissance revival elements such as the hipped roof and arched upper windows.
Phillips is a community in Minneapolis, just south of downtown. Phillips is a diverse area in many ways: its population includes people of many nationalities; it has a mix of residential, commercial and industrial uses; and it is home to several large employers such as Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Wells Fargo Mortgage and Allina Health Care Services along with small neighborhood businesses. Traditionally, it was both a community and a neighborhood. On May 9, 2002, Phillips neighborhood was subdivided into four smaller neighborhoods. The official neighborhoods are now known as Ventura Village, Phillips West, East Phillips, and Midtown Phillips. Though not an officially designated neighborhood, Phillips also includes the Little Earth residential area. The boundaries of the Phillips community are Interstate 94 to the north, Hiawatha Avenue to the east, Lake Street to the south, and Interstate 35W to the west.
Midtown Phillips is a neighborhood within the Phillips community in Minneapolis. Its boundaries are East 24th Street to the north, Bloomington Avenue to the east, East Lake Street to the south, and Chicago Avenue to the west.
Midtown is a loosely defined region in south Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. There are no hard-set boundaries to the midtown area, but it is generally agreed to include the area in the vicinity of Lake Street between Interstate 35W and Hiawatha Avenue. Lake Street is the border between the Phillips and Powderhorn communities of Minneapolis. Lake Street/Midtown LRT Station, with service on the METRO Blue Line, is located on the eastern edge of the area.
The Landmark Center or 401 Park Building in Boston, Massachusetts is a commercial center situated in a limestone and brick art deco building built in 1929 for Sears, Roebuck and Company. It features a 200-foot-tall (61 m) tower and, as Sears Roebuck and Company Mail Order Store, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated as a Boston Landmark in 1989.
The Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex on the west side of Chicago, Illinois is where Sears conducted the bulk of its mail order operations between 1906 and 1993. It also served as the corporate headquarters until 1973, when the Sears Tower was completed. Of its original 40-acre (16 ha) complex, only three buildings now survive, and have been adaptively rehabilitated to other uses. The complex was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978, at which time it still included the 3,000,000-square-foot mail order plant, the world's largest commercial building when it was completed. That building has been demolished, its site taken up by the Homan Square redevelopment project.
Park Avenue West Tower is a high-rise in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. The 30-floor tower consists of commercial office space, ground floor retail, and apartments. It is the fourth tallest building in Portland behind the Wells Fargo Center, KOIN Center, and the US Bancorp Tower. Developed by TMT Development and designed by TVA Architects. The building is taller than allowed by the zoning code at the time. A deal was made with the city for a variance in exchange for employing union workers—fulfillment is still under dispute.
The Omaha Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant is located at 1514-1524 Cuming Street in North Omaha, Nebraska. In its 16 years of operation, the plant employed 1,200 people and built approximately 450,000 cars and trucks. In the 1920s, it was Omaha's second-biggest shipper.
The Sears, Roebuck & Company product distribution center in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, California, is a historic landmark that was one of the company's mail-order facilities, with a retail store on the ground floor.
The Atlanta Biltmore Hotel and Biltmore Apartments is a historic building located in Atlanta, Georgia. The complex, originally consisting of a hotel and apartments, was developed by William Candler, son of Coca-Cola executive Asa Candler, with Holland Ball Judkins and John McEntee Bowman. The original hotel building was converted to an office building in 1999. The building is currently owned by the Georgia Institute of Technology and is adjacent to Technology Square.
Sears Building is the name of a number of buildings across North America, most of which have been converted to other uses since being Sears regional headquarters, warehouses, and/or retail stores:
The Midtown Woodward Historic District is a historic district located along Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. Structures in the district are located between 2951 and 3424 Woodward Avenue, and include structures on the corner of Charlotte Street and Peterboro Street. The district was admitted to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.
Ponce City Market is a mixed-use development located in a former Sears catalogue facility in Atlanta, with national and local retail anchors, restaurants, a food hall, boutiques and offices, and residential units. It is located adjacent to the intersection of the BeltLine with Ponce de Leon Avenue in the Old Fourth Ward near Virginia Highland, Poncey-Highland and Midtown neighborhoods. The 2.1-million-square-foot (200,000 m2) building, one of the largest by volume in the Southeast United States, was used by Sears, Roebuck and Co. from 1926–1987 and later by the City of Atlanta as "City Hall East". The building's lot covers 16 acres (65,000 m2). Ponce City Market officially opened on August 25, 2014. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.
Crosstown Concourse is a mixed use development in the heart of the Crosstown neighborhood, so named for the intersecting trolley tracks at Cleveland and Poplar that connected Memphis commuters to the neighborhood in 1927. Crosstown Concourse itself is located at the intersection of North Parkway and N. Watkins Street and is the western terminus of the V&E Greenline.
Pico/Rimpau is an area of Mid-City, Los Angeles, at the junction of Pico Boulevard, Rimpau Street, San Vicente Boulevard, Venice Boulevard, Vineyard Boulevard and West Boulevard. This area is the location of several key former and current transportation hubs and retail shopping centers for the Los Angeles area.
The U.S. city of Minneapolis featured officially and unofficially designated camp sites in city parks for people experiencing homelessness that operated from June 10, 2020, to January 7, 2021. The emergence of encampments on public property in Minneapolis was the result of pervasive homelessness, mitigations measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic in Minnesota, local unrest after the murder of George Floyd, and local policies that permitted encampments. At its peak in the summer of 2020, there were thousands of people camping at dozens of park sites across the city. Many of the encampment residents came from outside of Minneapolis to live in the parks. By the end of the permit experiment, four people had died in the city's park encampments, including the city's first homicide victim of 2021, who was stabbed to death inside a tent at Minnehaha Park on January 3, 2021.
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