Here’s what Santa Monica’s landmarked Sears will look like post mixed-use makeover

The owners of the landmarked Sears building in downtown Santa Monica will preserve the Moderne-style facade while rehabbing the site for restaurants, offices, and shops. That's according to plans filed with the city's landmarks commission, which is set to hear a presentation tonight on how the historic 1947 building will be redeveloped, the Santa Monica Daily Press reports.

New owners Seritage Growth Properties plans to make some changes to the building, most dramatically to the interior, but those changes aren’t described in detail in the presentation.

Exterior changes are mostly keeping in step with the building’s existing features, though Seritage does plan to add skylights and facade features to the upper section of the three-level building.

The rehab will also include seismically retrofitting the building’s wooden bow-truss roof structure. The architects for the project are listed in city records as House & Robertson Architects.

Planning staff are recommending the project’s application be approved.

Seritage is a real estate trust that Sears created in 2015 to manage many of the struggling company’s real estate holdings. Seritage terminated the Santa Monica store’s lease, and the Sears closed down in April.

At least two other Sears stores in the LA area have plans in motion for redevelopment.

In Boyle Heights, Downtown developer Izek Shomof plans to turn the striking Sears complex into a mixed-use residential community. In Hollywood, not far from the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, CIM Group has plans to turn a Sears shuttered since 2008 into a mixed-use development with 375 residential units and almost 265,000 square feet of retail space.

sears santa monica, seritage

• Application for former Sear’s building before Landmarks Commission [Santa Monica Daily Press]
• Santa Monica Sears could become big mixed use project [Curbed LA]