Making Way for the Woodman's Center: Demolition of Former Sears Expected to Start in February

The Woodman’s Center was proposed in 2019. The Sears site was eyed for the complex in 2021 and it was sold to the city of Janesville for $1 in 2022.

On Jan. 22, the Janesville City Council approved a $38.13 million construction bid from JP Cullen, of Janesville. The total ultimate price tag is expected to be $47.6 million, with 37% contributed by the city.

Julie Cubbage, general manger of the Uptown Janesville mall, said last April in an interview with The Gazette that Rockstep Capital, owner of the Sears property, sold the city the building for $1 because it believed the Woodman’s Center will bring economic activity to the mall and the surrounding area.

“Everybody comments on how empty the mall is when they walk through it,” Cubbage said in that interview. “It will help revitalize the mall.”

Mall history

Ed Pulliam, the original Janesville Mall manager from 1973 to 2000, said the Milton Avenue site was scouted as a potential location for a shopping center by Roger Benjamin, the original mall property owner, in 1970.

Pulliam said its close proximity to the interstate and Highway 14 made it an ideal location for a shopping center.

Articles published in the Gazette in the 1970’s shared city council concerns, however, that putting the mall on Milton Avenue would be detrimental to downtown.

Concerns that businesses were closing downtown were raised as the mall was proposed for a different location.

“Commissioners also agreed that the city cannot be expected to halt commercial development in outlying areas until the downtown merchants solve their problems,” one article said. “In voting to put the matter before the council, commissioners criticized downtown merchants and property owners for failing to act long ago to revitalize the central business district.”

Marvin Roth, a plan commissioner and president of the council, said in 1970 that the proposed shopping center would take away from the downtown.

Ultimately, city planners approved the mall’s construction in 1970 and it was completed in 1973 at a cost of $15 million. Initially, it had 500,000-square-feet of retail space with 50 stores in the “enclosed, all-weather controlled mall,” said a Gazette article.

The mall was tied into Montgomery Ward. It later added a movie theater and 12 other stores signed on to open after construction.

History of Sears

Sears came much later, built onto the mall in 1996.

Janesville’s original Sears, on West Milwaukee Street in downtown Janesville, opened in the 1930’s.

Jackie Wood, current owner of Olde Town Mall, 20 S. Main St., lived with her family downtown and worked at the downtown Sears in the toy department at Christmastime. She remembers it as a small department near the end of the store near the auto section, that always smelt like tires.

“I always liked Sears, it was a neat store,” she said. “You could buy lots of things and they always had the catalogs in the paper.”

She recalls that the managers were always in the store and knew every employee. She said that prior to Milton Avenue being the go-to shopping district, downtown was the location of most city stores, meat markets and bakeries.

In a Gazette article, Sears announced in 1984 that it was moving to 2811 Milton Ave., now the site of Panera Bread and a UPS store.

Wood said once Sears and JC Penney left, downtown started to slide as some stores closed and other went under. She remembers the downtown becoming “shabby” and vacant.

“Once the mall was up the downtown became less of a shopping center and more of a service center with the courthouse and police station,” she said

In 1996, Sears constructed its new building, that’s now about to come down. The two-story 110,000 square-foot department store was built at what Pulliam recalls had once been an opening into the mall.

A current Gazette employee who used to work at Sears said that the store was a big deal because it was the only place in Rock County that had an escalator.

Pulliam said Sears’ presence made the Janesville Mall competitive with other regional malls.

“That made the Janesville Mall a four-anchor shopping center,” he said. “And that was a pretty damn good-sized shopping center for a city the size of Janesville.”

Sears closed the Janesville store in February of 2018 and the retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy later that year.

Woodmans’ Center

Cubbage told the Gazette in the April 2023 interview that Rockstep has redeveloped malls in other small and mid-sized cities.

She said the company understands malls will no longer thrive on just traditional retailers and said Rockstep has been trying to create different experiences in its malls to attract customers.

Cubbage said Rockstep opened a space museum in a mall in Kansas, for instance.

Cubbage said the presence of the Woodman’s Center, and its positive impact on the adjacent mall, will benefit downtown.

“The Woodman’s Center is going to enrich the downtown because when families come to the Janesville area, they aren’t going to want to just stay here. They are going to want to explore the community,” Cubbage said.

She said there’s a vision to put a hotel on the site of the mall’s former Boston Store, that’s also been shuttered for a while now.

Other efforts to get people into the mall, such as the indoor farmers market, will hopefully continue after the Woodman’s center rises, Cubbage said.

Cubbage noted that the Woodman’s Center is more than just an ice arena, with planned space for trade shows and conventions, and said that will bring activity back to the mall.

Cubbage said the only place in Janesville that approaches what the new facility will offer is the Holiday Inn Express, that has convention and meeting space.

Wood, a downtown business owner, said the downtown is vital enough now, that reinvigorating the mall, and building the Woodman’s Center, shouldn’t hurt it.

“The downtown can stand on its own more than in the past,” she said. “It offers restaurants and retail and is much more established.”

“I think the Woodman’s Center will be entertainment and it will bring people into the city then people will spend more time in the community and explore the downtown,” Wood added.

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