Wausau Buys Vacant Sears Building to Repurpose Downtown Mall

The city of Wausau has voted to purchase the vacant Sears building in its struggling downtown mall in an effort to attract new tenants.

City leaders approved $650,000 for the property, “far below what its market price would be,” said the city’s economic development director Christian Schock.

Schock said the city already has two serious offers for the space, which could become either a movie theater complex or a furniture store.

“The theater would bring a lot of liveliness to downtown, and help diversify the mall,” Schock said. “The furniture store, their renovation would be significantly cheaper. They have a higher than normal wage scale for their employees, which is also very positive.”

Schock said there is hope for the mall despite the loss of two of its three anchor stores.

“We’ve had so much negativity on the mall, really for the past two years,” he said. “And what’s really important is that we see, wow, there really is market interest in downtown Wausau, and that the re-positioning of the mall is possible.”

There is still no tenant in the works for the vacant JC Penney space.

Wausau demolished much of its old downtown in order to build the mall in the 1980s. Sears was one of the original anchors.