Demolition has begun on the 2.4 million square feet of office space that once served as Sears’ worldwide headquarters in Hoffman Estates.
The campus served as the retail giant’s headquarters between the move from Chicago’s Sears Tower in the early 1990s until the company put the sprawling 273 acres up for sale in 2021.
At its peak, the campus was home to about 9,000 employees. But after the last of them were sent home due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, none ever returned.
One of the 30 largest structures in the world in terms of square footage, the Sears headquarters is significantly ahead of even the John Hancock and Empire State buildings, according to Jeff Olson, project executive for Carol Stream-based American Demolition.
Demolition continues at the former Sears headquarters Wednesday in Hoffman Estates.
Brian Hill/bhill@dailyherald.com
“It comes but once in a career to demolish a building of this size,” he said back in April, when the project was still focused on removal of interior furniture and equipment.
The site was purchased last year by Dallas-based Compass Datacenters for a $10 billion investment by it and its partners to build five hyperscale data centers — each more than a quarter-million square feet — and provide the supply of electricity they’ll require.
A hyperscale data center is one used by and for a single company, as opposed to a multitenant facility.
Katy Hancock, vice president of public relations for Compass, said the demolition is expected to take approximately 18 months from its start in the spring before construction could possibly begin in late 2025.
Demolition work on the 2.4 million-square-foot former Sears headquarters in Hoffman Estates has moved from the interior to the exterior this summer.
Brian Hill/bhill@dailyherald.com
Most of the parking structures are already gone, but demolition of the office buildings themselves will continue one by one, top to bottom, west to east, for well over another year.
“To my mind, it’s on schedule,” Hancock said of the current progress.
Demolition of the former Sears headquarters in Hoffman Estates is making way for Compass Datacenters’ forthcoming $10 billion data center campus.
Brian Hill/bhill@dailyherald.com
Compass officials said American Demolition was selected specifically for its proven ability to minimize waste and maximize reuse of materials.
Dominick DiSilvio, American Demolition’s vice president of estimating, said last spring that about 95% of the structure would be recycled — keeping 400 million pounds of debris out of landfills.