Willis Tower to entice the firm to stay. Two years later, Sears began moving its own offices out of the Sears Tower. In 1994, Sears sold the building to Boston-based AEW Capital Management, with financing from MetLife. At the time, it was one-third vacant. By 1995, Sears had completely left the building, moving to a new office campus in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. In 1997, Toronto-based TrizecHahn Corporation (the owner of the CN Tower at the time) purchased the building for $110 million, and assumption of $4 million in liabilities, and a $734 million mortgage. In 2003, Trizec surrendered the building to lender
Joshua Sears Building works on what is now Peter Kirk Park. The building originally intended to house a bank at the corner. Sears outfitted the entire interior and even hired a partial staff but with the arrival of the Panic of 1893, the doors, like the steel mill, never opened. In the years after the bust, the building, like many others in the area remained mostly vacant, though it, along with a large portion of the original townsite remained in the ownership of the Sears estate. The corner space was eventually occupied by a printing company and later a grocery store. An electric