History of Sears and Roebuck in Downtown Dayton

In its heyday, downtown Dayton bustled with retail activity, from small shops to massive department stores with so many amenities that they almost served as mini cities of their own.

I tell the story of Rike’s in my book Lost Dayton, but today’s article will be about another major player in retail that once called downtown home: Sears.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. began as a mail-order watch and jewelry company in Chicago in 1892, and before long they greatly expanded the products available in their catalogs. Rural farmers were a major customer group, who during those days had to shop at local general stores with a limited selection of goods usually sold on credit for high prices that were negotiated. Sears was also a pioneer in offering mass-produced goods in their catalogs, at a time when “most people made their own clothes and even their own furniture.” It was also one of the first to cater to both men and women.

Over the next few decades, the company expanded from mail order to physical retail stores. The first stores, interestingly, were concentrated in blue-collar neighborhoods far away from downtowns. Before 1950 the brick and mortar business would gradually overtake the mail order portion of the company, and Sears would expand their sites considerably.

Sears and Roebuck came to downtown Dayton in the early 1930s, first occupying a location at Sixth and Main Streets. It opened what would become its flagship store at 241 East First Street (the southwest corner of Monument and Patterson) in 1946.

Sears also built a major suburban presence, opening a store at the Salem Mall in Trotwood in 1966. (That Sears outlasted the rest of the mall, which was demolished in 2006, before eventually closing in 2014.) But for the latter half of the 20th century, Sears was an anchor in the downtown Dayton retail scene. Many Daytonians still remember the staggering selection of goods, ranging from appliances and clothing to tools to toys. Other cherished memories include the smell of caramel corn as you walked in one of the entrances, as well as the store’s hot dog stand. At least one married couple even met for the first time at the downtown Sears!

But as suburbanization increased, all downtown retail began to struggle mightily. Downtown’s Sears and Roebuck closed as a full-service department store in 1993, at the same time a new store opened at the Fairfield Commons mall in Beavercreek. This came just one year after the closure of Lazarus (Rike’s) in 1992, leaving Elder-Beerman on Courthouse Square as downtown’s only department store (until it too closed in 2002).

Sears’s move was part of a nationwide downsizing involving the closing of 113 Sears stores and the elimination of 50,000 jobs. That same year, the famous Sears catalog was printed for the last time. But no jobs were lost in Dayton then, as 100 downtown workers were transferred to Beavercreek, and the other 250 remained as the downtown location transitioned to an “outlet store” and the service and repair center across the street remained. At that time the store manager said “the downtown store is not being treated as a closing, but as a relocation. We’re going to expand the outlet store downtown. It’s been very successful for us.”

But that optimism only lasted until June 1995, at which point a Dayton Daily News article referred to the downtown location as “reduced to hawking discount furniture and appliances.” It closed at that point for good, with the service center moving south near the Dayton Mall.

For the next five years, various entities attempted to purchase the now abandoned structure, which was a key property for budding riverfront development plans that eventually became Riverscape Metropark and the Dayton Dragons ballpark. The shuttered building was covered in graffiti, and was called a major eyesore as well as a “long shadow” over the new development plans.

The lengthy saga involved a legal battle and a $5.5 million asking price from the owners compared to a $1 million appraised value from the county. It was finally acquired by the City of Dayton in a complicated, three-party transaction involving the Port Authority in December of 1999.

The ballpark opened in April 2000. In October of that year, Relizon Co., the former business unit of Reynolds & Reynolds, announced plans to build a five-story building for its headquarters at the former Sears site. The building, which originally was targeted for adaptive reuse but had deteriorated swiftly since its closure, was demolished in 2001 for the new build.

One former Sears employee, Alma Kershner, who watched the downtown Sears get built and worked from 1962 to 1996, did not want to be there to see it come down. As she explained to the Dayton Daily News, “Just too many memories for me. I would have just stood there and cried.” She noted that it was the first major structure built in Dayton after World War II.

“Our beloved Sears store was taken down with barely a notice,” she continued. “Someone needs to say that the store is missed. It was a wonderful place … more than a working man’s store. It was a place where the employees cared. It was a place where the customers were made welcome and would come back.”

The new building that replaced Sears includes an attached parking garage and today is home to CareSource.

In the early 2000s there were plans for a $230 million redevelopment surrounding the ballpark but this eventually stalled. Instead, development proceeded gradually over the next two decades, with a smattering of new condos to replace the surface lots on Patterson, then the major Water Street developments many years later. The final corner of Monument and Patterson to be developed is now the Farfield Inn and Suites, the first hotel to open downtown in decades. It may be a while before retail makes a major comeback in downtown Dayton, but fortunately the former Sears location is once again full of energy.

Sources
Dayton Daily News Archives: 1992-2001

Image Credits
Dayton History Books Online/Dayton Metro Library