There are places all over town where green is disappearing and structures are taking its place. But there are some places in town that are so ugly, they are begging to be replaced. The Sears Mall certainly qualifies as one of the prime spots.Imagine an eye-soothing, noise absorbing four foot high tree topped green berm bordering Benson, Northern Lights, and Seward Highway. Real architecture with interesting lines, aesthetic surfaces, functional design and spaces both inside and out.
Let's hope no one nominates this eyesore for the Historic Preservation List. Instead it should go on the to-tear-down-and-make-beautiful list. If people stop shopping there, maybe it will happen sooner. Or to keep people shopping there the owners could start engaging the community to turn this prime location into a beautiful urban oasis.
Not worthy of "historic preservation," but the place does have a lot of history. I think it was Anchorage's first truly large mall.
ReplyDeleteI remember back in the mid-70s, when it was fairly new, Sears had a big automotive service center on the east end. We lived in Whittier, where the roads were unpaved and had huge chuck holes. I waited until there was a sale on for Sears' "lifetime" shock absorbers. I went in and paid to have them installed.
They'd last about nine months in Whittier. I got them replaced four times for free. Then they stopped calling them "lifetime."
Phil, with your tires you were like my brother's hockey team that went to a certain all-you-can eat pizza place after their games, where they put up signs that would only let us go up four times. . .
ReplyDeleteAmen, Steve!!!
ReplyDeletei'd hesitate a little before being super-critical, and consider it in the context of its times. it opened in the late sixties, when rules for landscaping weren't enforced, and it maye have even been outside the city limits then. it was pretty nice at the time, especially in its original color scheme of dark and darker brown. another note: benson blvd. wasn't there when it was built [northern lights had two lanes in each direction], so the part along benson was the back of the building and only presented to an alley and some sparsely trafficked side streets. the other glitzy shopping destinations were downtown, including the shops under the penney's parking garage. the sears mall used to have a carousel inside. not one you could ride, and only half of it was there and set against a mirrored wall, but it did have real carved wooden horses. i'd kind of forgotten about this until '94 when i read the book 'johnny's girl'. the place was pretty quickly eclipsed by university center and then dozens of others, and later fell into disrepair. a lack of maintenance probably partly explained by the fate of the sears chain in general. i still like the place. there are a few other neat retail buildings from that era along northern lights, too. the shingled place across from the alaska club [old safeway] just east of minnesota. and the valhalla center between arctic and C st.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Clark, for the history. Benson was there when we arrived in '77. I do understand this was the first big mall, but from Seward Highway it's pretty much of a giant eyesore today. In lots of cities they have buildings that are hundreds of years old that still look good, but probably not from their early frontier days.
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