Fashion retailer Primark seeking upper level of ex-Sears store at Woodfield, village says

Only five months after the last Sears store in Illinois closed its doors, there are plans afoot for the European fashion retailer Primark to occupy the upper level of that former 50-year-old site at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg.

Village officials say they have been informed that Primark is pursuing a 10-year lease of the upper level from Transformco, the company that emerged from Sears Holdings’ bankruptcy.

Schaumburg Economic Development Director Matt Frank said the village is anticipating a proposal to be filed in May for a new Primark store to open in 2023.

“I think it shows the attraction of Woodfield Mall and that high-profile users like Primark want to be there,” Frank said of the iconic shopping center that celebrated its own 50th anniversary last year.

Primark has one existing Chicago-area location: 35 N. State St., at the intersection of Washington Street in Chicago’s Loop.

Representatives of Primark, Transformco and Woodfield Mall did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Like the rest of Woodfield Mall’s original anchors, however, the Sears store always was owned by the retailer itself and Transformco intends to remain the landlord, Frank said.

Though the identification of a new tenant for nearly half the former Sears store happened relatively quickly, the former Lord & Taylor store at Woodfield has remained vacant since its 2020 closing.

There’s also been no word of a bidder for Sears Holdings’ 30-year-old corporate headquarters consisting of 2.4 million square feet of office space and 120 undeveloped acres around it in Hoffman Estates.

Transformco put the campus that’s 11 miles west of Woodfield Mall on the market earlier this year.