Longtime Sears manager talks of Valley View mall store’s closing

The plan to close Sears at La Crosse’s Valley View Mall apparently came as a surprise to many people associated with the store.

That includes Dave McDowell, who came to La Crosse in 1974 to run the 5th Avenue store and continued as Sears manager through the first decade of business at the mall.

McDowell, who now serves on the La Crosse Center board, is critical of the way the current owners of Sears managed the company. And added that the ‘Amazons of the world’ have made it a ‘living hell for retailers,’ who could provide customer services that the internet cannot.

“We had some excellent installed home improvement vendors and things like that — roofing siding fencing — and our suburban tractor liknes were very strong,” McDowell said. “That’s hard to replace on the internet.”

McDowell believes Sears has been able to stay so long at Valley View because the company has owned its store property and the surrounding parking area.

Sears is set to close some time in November, joining Macy’s, Herbergers, K-Mart and Wettstein’s as major retailers in La Crosse that have or will shut down over the last two years.

McDowell is disappointed that the parent company decided to close Sears in both La Crosse and Eau Claire.

McDowell remembers La Crosse Mayor Pat Zielke didn’t want Sears to leave downtown for the mall, but the company decided the move had to be made, which he believes turned out to be good.

“We didn’t have the space (downtown),” McDowell said. “Like I said, we had a two-bay auto center.

“We replaced all of that with 116,000 square foot store at Valley View and 16,000 of that was that auto center. It was 13 bays.”

The Sears auto center closed last year. McDowell said it was very profitable and was surprised when it closed.

McDowell added that Sears was a leader in many categories during its early years at the mall and had a terrific group of 200-300 workers.