The Sears Tower
 

They have proposed to change the name to the Willis Tower.
http://www.itsthesearstower.com/
Supposedly Willis insurance pays 15 dollars per square foot and whoever owns more of the building gets to name it.

DON'T FUCKING CHANGE THE NAME OF THE HISTORIC BUILDING IN OUR CITY!

CHICAGO STAND UP!

Um Sears hasn't owned the building for over a decade.. why the strong attachment to keeping it named after a company who has no more interest in it?

Um hellllllo HISTORY.

Did we like it when Comiskey became US Cellular?
Did we like it when Chicago Stadium became United Center?

Does any city like a historic landmark get a name change?

Not only change the name, they're talking about changing the color from black(dark really) to silver. :eek:

Did I like it went the Gund Arena became the Q?
Did I like it when the Jake became Progressive Field?

It's a commercial office building, not the Lincoln freakin Memorial.

Hey it's part of Chicago's history.

It's the tallest building in the continental Americas. I will proudly recognize it as the Sears Tower. You can't downplay it for me.

It defines the Chicago skyline, arguably the best skyline in the world.

I'm with Fresh on this one. It irks me when the names of buildings, stadiums, airports, etc. are changed. You learn the name of something and then that should be it.

You shouldn't have to go relearning the names of things every couple of years because of the whims of some CEO or politician.

yeah

Well you know when you own something I think you can name it whatever you want. Fluffy the puppy or Christine the murderous car. But hey that's just me. That said, I still use the old names Gund and the Jake on a regular basis.

They can call it whatever the heck they feel like. I will be calling it the Sears Tower.

I'm with Dar!

Yeah, that works to a point, but what if you are talking to someone a few years down the road, and they don't know what you are talking about because they only know it by the new name?

I'll be old or dead by then. Nobody's going to listen to me anyway. :eyebrow:

I heard this story yesterday morning. It made me a little sad. I remember my grandparents taking me up to the top (well, as far as the public could go anyway) on one of my summer visits with them. Now I'm going to have to take my daughter to visit the Willis tower? Blech.

I hate it when they change the names of stuff. It's a PIA for locals trying to give directions to people. "Crap, not the Five Seasons Center, I mean the U.S. Cellular Center. "

Fuck it, who cares, it's in Chicago after all.:stickpoke
:bolt:

I don't think it really matters because the people will call it whatever they want anyway. In Phoenix we have Bank One ballpark (the BOB), even though it officially became Chase Field a couple years ago.

We still have Squaw Peak and Squaw Peak Parkway even though our former govenor (current head of homeland security) ramrodded a name change through more than five years ago.

Even on a smaller scale we call a particular soccer facility "wallball" even though that name changed about 20 years ago.

People call stuff whatever. There's a "Bicentennial Park" in the area where I grew up that I never heard called anything other than the "Mini-Park" even though there's always been a big sign with it's proper name. If it becomes the Conglomerated Corporations park, guess what we'll call it?

Are they changing the color so it blends in better with the sky and is less likely to get hit by a plane load of terrorists?

It is the Sears Tower, darn it, and so it should remain.

Kind of like how New Yorkers feel about 6th Avenue.

Even warehouses in New Jersey go for $20 per square foot and higher.

Sure, if it's a casual thing like that you can get away with it. We've got a neighborhood park that everyone call "the rocks" because there are a bunch of boulders there. What annoys me is that I can't remember what the official name of some places are. Since I've lived here, we have like 20 different corporate names for the handful of different venues around town, so when I hear that some band will be playing at Conglomerated Inc. Stadium, I always have to look up the website to see which damn place that is. "Oh, they mean the basketball place." Or, "oh, that's the outdoor place out RT 66 with the horrible traffic."

And don't get me started on Washington National Airport being named after Reagan.

I wonder when they'll rename the Empire State Building? King Kong will be PISSED if he can't find it.

At least Willis sounds like a normal name. What if they wanted to name it "Tostitos Tower" or some shit?

They're preparing you for the half-sized building to be built next to it ... Arnold.

Chicago is the hub of StarLight which is 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than the internet and which one would think would be appreciated by a physicist. :p

:lol:

Whatchoo talkin' about?

We could all chip in some $$$, buy the building and rename the Willis Tower to Cellar Tower. That might confuse some folk, but we'd know what we were talking about. ;)

Some Shit Tower.



Hmmmmm. That's growing on me.



And besides, I can't hear "Willis" without hearing THIS:

And now YOU can't either, mwa hahahahah!!1

I can't imagine the name means that much anymore. They way commerical names have made their way into the names of stadiums and other places they have bought set the stage for the perversion to begin.

With a name on the stadium, then expect a meltdown. Let's see. The new Mets stadium is a trophy for someone who just lost half his net worth on Madoff. What was Baltimore's stadium named? That internet company quickly disappeared.

Blockbuster put its name on a stadium. It quickly diminished. Citizen Bank names a baseball park. So Royal Bank of Scotland then needed $billions from the British government.

Should the tower be named Willis, then how quickly will that company disappear? How widespread is that trend?

Question: How much frickin' money is wasted on changing signage, letterhead, business cards etc. when a company is bought or re-branded?

Who cares. The compay pays for most of it. It is their brand.

Who cares? How about a 50k salary guy that gets laid off while they're spending 5 million on a "makeover" ??? I bet he cares.

It would be easy to draw that conclusion, more difficult to prove the connection. All aspects of business have those parallels. I see it in health care. We spend 1.5mil on a make over of the grounds and putting in fountains while we lay off nurses. It doesn't make sense but it happens every day in every industry.

Hard to answer. But when Washington National Airport was renamed by the Republicans Congress in 1998 after Reagan, it cost $400,000 just to change all the signs in the metro public transportation system. Congress did not pay for the change. The riders had to.

Each station in the system has a map and various signs that list all the other stations. There are 86 stations. The custom signs in each of them had to be changed, as well as all the signs/maps in each rail car and bus in the entire system.

$400,000 just for the public transportation in that city. Just one small part of the costs to change the name.

They should rename it the Al Qaida Tower.

For so many reasons. Most of which make me laugh, but then I'm a sick individual.

It thumbs the nose at terrorists, while at the same time making it emotionally harder to hit, like renaming fish "sea-kittens".

How about renaming it "Osama's Crib"?

That is pretty funny. Maybe they need to change the name of Freedom Tower to something like that.

Osama's Erection?

Oh, ew. ;)

Just like when the democratic govenor of arizona ramrodded a name change for a mountain peak and road system for political reasons. It happens on both sides of the aisle. Anyone else think Tom Clancy had the right idea when he wrote about a plane crashing into a joint session of congress with all the SC justices and most of the other players in washington? Eh, maybe it's just me.

The name change is official today:

http://i.usatoday.net/news/_photos/2...wer-topper.jpg

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...16-sears_N.htm

I don't care what they call it.

I'm still calling it "Ron White's Big Ole Fuckin' Building".

Whatchoutalkinbout?????