Reply With QuoteI've heard about the name change- it was on the news, but that silver bit- where did you hear that at?
Silver? No thanks, its a landmark building it should remain black.
I've heard about the name change- it was on the news, but that silver bit- where did you hear that at?
I anticipate a deluge of phallic jokes.
As to the reclad: http://www.suntimes.com/business/roe...eder25.article
Sears Tower in silver?
REAL ESTATE | 110-story icon may get paint job to boost tenants, energy
February 25, 2009
DAVID ROEDER droeder@suntimes.com
That would be a travesty!
(thanks for the link)
God, our brain trusts here in New York are effecting the rest of the world now as well.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...mo07AD9915HQ01
Sears Tower to undergo $350M green remodel
By CARYN ROUSSEAU – 7 hours ago
The Sears Tower will undergo a $350 million green remodeling effort at the 110-story skyscraper, including wind turbines, green roofs and solar panels.
Owners and architects said Wednesday that the plan will reduce electricity use in the building by 80 percent and save 24 million gallons of water a year.
Plans also include construction of a 50-story, 500-room luxury hotel next door.
Building officials say the project should take five years to complete and create 3,600 jobs.
The famous skyscraper is to be renamed Willis Tower later this summer. Officials say they'd like to achieve "LEED" status, otherwise known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.
It's a standard monitored by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Plus the addition of "The Ledge"
Looks like the hotel won't make a dent in the skyline.
Hotel is ugly, and the green areas on the setbacks appear to be where at least some of the window washing rig tracks are. Huh.
Hotel design looks fine to me, albeit nothing special. However, it doesn't compliment Sears Tower at all.
My reaction to these planned retrofits:
ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz z z z
I hope people enjoy the view from the blandest side possible. Look kids, the suburbs!
Sears Tower Becomes Willis Tower Thursday
This combo of photos from March 12, 2009, top, and Monday, July 13, 2009, show pedestrians walking past the Sears Tower in Chicago. The bottom shows the granite marker outside the building covered in black in preparation for the building's name being changed to Willis Tower during a formal ceremony on Thursday, July 16. The London-based Willis Group Holdings got the naming rights as part of its lease agreement with the real estate investment group that owns Sears Tower. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
CARYN ROUSSEAU | July 15, 2009 11:51 PM EST |
CHICAGO — Sports fans have dealt with it for years: a favorite team sells the naming rights to its stadium in a lucrative, if unsentimental, money grab.
But when Chicago residents go to bed Thursday night their beloved Sears Tower, one of the world's iconic skyscrapers and the tallest building in the U.S., will no longer be the Sears Tower. It will be Willis Tower.
Or will it?
"It's always going to be the Sears Tower. It's part of Chicago and I won't call it Willis Tower. In Chicago we hold fast," Chicago teacher Marianne Turk, 46, said as she stood in line to go up to the building's Skydeck on Monday.
Mayor Richard M. Daley, the building's owners and others will be at a Thursday renaming ceremony hosted by Willis Group Holdings. The London-based insurance services company secured the naming rights as part an agreement to lease 140,000 square feet of space in the tower.
The building has been known as Sears Tower since it opened in 1973. It's original tenant, Sears Roebuck and Co., moved out in 1992. A real estate investment group in 2004, American Landmark Properties of Skokie, now owns the 1,450-foot, 110-story skyscraper.
When the renaming was announced in March, a spokesman for Willis Group Holdings said the company understood the "sentimental attraction to the Sears Tower name," but noted the company was bringing hundreds of jobs to the city.
The Sears Tower isn't the only well known building to undergo a name change – New York City's Pan Am Building became the MetLife Building and Chicago's Standard Oil Building is now the Aon Center, said Carol Willis, founder and director of The Skyscraper Museum in New York.
Story continues below
Historically, skyscrapers have been ever-changing buildings and businesses within themselves, acting as a commodity to compete for high rents and tenants, Willis said. People are mistaken when they see tall buildings as symbols of a corporation, she said.
"Skyscrapers are really buildings that are about money," Willis said. "Naming rights are an asset of the building. They can be turned into money and that's what the new owners are doing."
It's become common for professional sports teams to sell the naming rights of their stadiums and arenas, as Chicago White Sox fans can attest, when their team's stadium, Comiskey Park, renamed U.S. Cellular Field in 2003.
But the public hasn't always taken to renamed skyscrapers. Many New Yorkers still refer to the Sony Building as the AT&T Building, said William Lozito, head of Minneapolis-based brand naming company Strategic Name Development. Getting the public to accept the Willis Tower name will be all the more difficult because the company is British and not immediately recognized by most Americans, he said.
"I don't think people are going to let go," Lozito said. "You don't mess with a landmark. It would be like trying to change the name of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a reference point. I think it's disorienting to try to change the
name."
The tower's owners acknowledge it will take time for some people to accept the new name, but they're confident it will happen eventually.
"It is controversial to a lot of people," said John Huston of American Landmark Properties, who represents the building ownership. "It is an icon, but I believe over time it will become known as Willis Tower and a name that we'll be proud of."
Alex Lucas, 29, an Arlington Heights business systems analyst who works down the street from the skyscraper, was so displeased with the name change that he started a Web site, . http://www.itsthesearstower.com
"The people of Chicago do value history," he said. "Just because it's a commercial structure doesn't mean it isn't historical. Chicago is going to lose a big part of what is its identity and I don't know what's going to fill that space."
John Russick, a senior curator at the Chicago History Museum, said residents see skyscrapers like the Sears Tower, with its dominance of the Chicago skyline, as landmarks, sculptures and icons.
"The first building you see when you're coming home on the horizon is the Sears Tower," Russick said. "We miss something when we don't see them as the fabric of our civic memory."
The new name isn't the only major change this year at Sears Tower. Last month, owners announced a $350 million greening effort, complete with wind turbines and solar panels, along with plans for a 50-story luxury hotel. For tourists, glass-bottomed enclosed balconies on the 103rd Skydeck were opened earlier this month, giving visitors a 1,353-foot look straight down.
All these efforts were part of a plan aimed at remarketing the building as a pioneer and reintroducing it to the world, owners say.
"Success for us is making this a place where more people want to be," Huston said. "Our goal is to transform the reality and perception."
The question now is after Thursday's ceremony what will people around the world call the transformed skyscraper.
"It will probably always be the Sears Tower," said 46-year-old farmer Jane Turmail of Vallonia, Ind. "It seems a little strange, but then things have to change."
Everything about the John Hancock building is better.
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