Renaming the Sears Tower and Other Signs of the Apocalypse
Changing the name of the Chicago landmark is a blow to the city's special identity.
It’s mid-March in Chicago and pre-spring fever is gripping the city. When you live in a town where winter grabs hold in November and tosses you about for four long months, harbingers of spring cause a condition approaching mass hysteria among the populace. One might weep at the first sighting of a robin. The first day above 60 degrees is likely to bring out every bush league ballplayer in the city to the diamonds in Grant Park, where the familiar crack of the bat and thwump of horsehide crashing into a leather glove evoke memories of childhood and losing Cubs teams. People cautiously open their windows for a few hours, admitting outside air into their homes for the first time in months, thus allowing the residual aroma of St. Patrick’s day corned beef and cabbage (not to mention the smell of fried perch left over from that ice fishing expedition in January) to dissipate in the breeze.
Of course, it’s an illusion. Jack Frost has no intention of vacating his comfortable perch for a good month or more, as any long time Chicagoan can attest. Memories of late April snowstorms abound — vicious Alberta clippers careening down from Canada with Old Man Winter at the helm, laughing at us mortals who mistook a couple of weeks of moderating temperatures as a sign that spring was here to stay.
But something evil is stalking the city as the seasons turn and opening day at Wrigley Field looms closer. The city fathers seem incapable of recognizing the danger, while ordinary citizens stand frozen in disbelief and outrage. It is an attack on the city’s identity, it’s self-image, it’s id and ego. And what really sticks in everyone’s craw is that there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. There is no defense, only surrender to the inevitable.
I speak of the ghastly news that London-based insurance broker Willis Group Holdings will buy Chicago’s landmark Sears Tower and change its name to the Willis Tower.
The shock to the populace could not have been more complete. Dozens of petitions have sprung up online calling on the city to prevent the name change. Angry residents have clogged phone lines of local talk radio shows to express their outrage. People gather outside of the building as if attending a wake, taking pictures and reminiscing about the first time they took the fastest elevator in the world to the observation deck. And from one end of the city to the other, the cry goes up …
Who the hell is Willis?
To an outsider, this probably looks faintly ridiculous, all of this brouhaha over the name change for a building. But outsiders do not understand the history of Chicago and the Sears Tower, nor the peculiar inferiority complex that Chicagoans have been carrying around for almost 100 years.
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Rick Moran is PJM Chicago editor; his own blog is Right Wing Nut House.
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21 Comments
1. LeighB:Perhaps Gary Coleman might lend his voice to the cause and deliver the line as only he can do it, “What you talkin’ about, Willis?”
Mar 19, 2009 - 3:17 am 2. Fernman:I don’t believe in “Karma” but perhaps is only reaping what they sow. After all, how can a city produce the likes of Richard Daley, Ron Blagovich and Obama and not get repaid in kind? Really, no sympathy from this Southerner, after all Atlanta did burn down and we are baaaack!!!!
Mar 19, 2009 - 3:45 am 3. RE:If I were still living in Chicago, I’d be a be a lot more concerned with Chicago’s close identification with being a corrupt cesspool, but I wisely left that dysfunctional culture years ago so I really don’t care about the really critical and important issues like building names.
Mar 19, 2009 - 4:46 am 4. jerryofva:It all started when the White Sox sold their birthright to US Cellular and erased nearly a Century of Chicago tradition by renaming New Commisky Park as US Cellular Field.
Mar 19, 2009 - 6:03 am 5. COL.SEBASTIAN MORAN:Mike Royko was a personal favorite of mine for many years..his commenty was invariably sharp and to-the-point.
Mar 19, 2009 - 6:21 am 6. Tony R:He was a master of skewer. His commentary on this situation would have been scathing. He is sorely missed.
S.M.
It’s hard to see the big deal here. It’s not like the buildings name is being changed from “The Chicago Tower”. The Willis Tower sounds ok….it certainly sounds every bit as tower-like as Sears Tower.
And it could be worse, it could have been taken over by Chiquita and painted yellow. Being known as “The Big Banana” would no doubt have left Chicagoans feeling even more inferior to New Yorks own fruity title.
Mar 19, 2009 - 6:30 am 7. Richard Cook:I am so glad I do not live in that city anymore. I just don’t understand how the people can “take it” year after year and not do anything about it. Unless the populace is waiting for their share of the cut. Uhhh RE: it IS a really important issue since millions are connected with naming rights. Lived in Chicago from 1987 until 1997. Just glad I am not there anymore.
Mar 19, 2009 - 6:54 am 8. JKB:So what is it about Chicago that prevents local businesses from succeeding and buying the local landmarks? Sears left and a London-based business is buying their building. Marshall Fields got bought out by the NYC based Macy’s. Chicago is no Detroit but I’d be worried at why local businesses aren’t able to compete.
The fact that Chicago-based businesses can’t make money like in NYC or London should be what makes Chicagoans feel like poor relations not some building.
Mar 19, 2009 - 8:24 am 9. kelly k:“Sears left and a London-based business is buying their building.”
Sears left long ago. The building was designed for projected space needs, based on their catalogue business, and Sears simply never grew into those projections. Rather than be a landlord for several floors of tenants, Sears sold the tower and moved to the burbs. The company’s still in business, and it’s still based in the Chicago area.
I think the real issue is, why rename a landmark? It’s a valid question.
Mar 19, 2009 - 9:54 am 10. ramsis:at least it’s not been renamed the obama tower yet!!
Mar 19, 2009 - 10:22 am 11. Chicagoan:Wow, Moran, where do you get your information? You need a new source.
Just one of the reasons people here are angry is that Willis was handed naming rights in return for a lousy three floor lease. They did NOT buy the building. They did not pay one extra nickel for naming rights. The current owners just threw the name, and history, away.
And what were you drinking when you came to the conclusion that “Chicagoans … look at the city’s magnificent skyline and see the building towering above the rest of the skyscrapers, reminding residents that their city is indeed a special place — a place of which all can take pride.” I’m gagging on that one. Daley and his political cronies are turning this city into a cesspool. Why do you think so many of the commenters here mention that they are glad not to live here anymore? Wish I didn’t.
Mar 19, 2009 - 11:03 am 12. MackDaddy:I move to name it the Wesley Willis Tower.
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago!
Mar 19, 2009 - 11:55 am 13. Cletus:The same thing happened in my native Toronto. A media company called Rogers Communications bought up the Sky Dome (which was an awesome sports arena with an awesome name) and renamed it the “Rogers Center”, a lame ass name that in turn makes the dome lame. Needless to say, people are still pissed about it years later, and there’s not a damn thing we can do.
Mar 19, 2009 - 12:16 pm 14. LawhawkSF:Poor Chicago (my place of birth). I understand the angst. I live in San Francisco now, and years after it happened, I haven’t recovered from them renaming Candlestick Park. Maybe they could compromise and call it the Bruce Willis Tower so it would still retain some of its City of the Big Shoulders image.
Mar 19, 2009 - 12:33 pm 15. Mr Wolf:Whaddaya mean, ”used to be associated with gangsters” ???
STILL IS!
Just ask Rahm…
Mr Wolf
Mar 19, 2009 - 12:46 pm 16. malclave:Willis Tower?
Must be just a second-rate building. Otherwise it would be named after Obama.
Mar 19, 2009 - 3:13 pm 17. Will:Folks,we’re losing our identification by standing by and not objecting like bunch of whipped pups or a herd of sheep.
Mar 19, 2009 - 4:34 pm 18. LeighB:Renaming it after Obama might make sense, how about:
- Teleprompter Towers
Mar 19, 2009 - 5:21 pm 19. venividivici:- Sky High DEbT
- U4 (uh…uh…um…uh)
- Towering Ego
- Social Izzzum
- The One
- M00bs
- The Precedent
Just another weigh station in the ongoing decline:
http://www.newgeography.com/content/0040-the-decline-chicago-the-city-doesnt-work
Mar 19, 2009 - 7:31 pm 20. cackcon:So wait, Chicagoans are upset that the name of one corporation replaces the name of another corporation on the building? Perhaps Sears & Roebuck should have purchased rights further out than 2003. Oh well, capitalism is a b#$%# ain’t it?
Mar 21, 2009 - 2:05 pm 21. Jeff:I am a Chicagoan, loved Royko, and I don’t care about the Sears Tower or Willis Tower. Nelson Algren another Chicago writer wrote the book “City on the Make”, and probably would have loved this. Things go to the highest bidder.
Sears got sick of lining the pockets of the machine, let the foreigners do it. They can be the chumbalones.
Illinois is so corrupt, they call politics, “The Combine” the way Dems and Reps feed at the public trough.
Mar 22, 2009 - 6:29 am