Willowick Yesterday : 29700 Lakeshore Blvd

Shoregate shopping center opened in 1955, but within a year, plans were made to add on to the young complex. From an article dated September 6, 1956:

Willowick Approves Rezoning Ordinance
Willowick Council last night passed a rezoning ordinance paving the way for a 28-acre expansion of the the Shoregate Shopping Center on Lake Shore Boulevard.

The center's westerly limit, now E. 305th Street, thus will be at E. 293rd Street.

With passage of the rezoning ordinance, Wm. Taylor Son & Co. is expected to go ahead with its plans to build a four million dollar store at the center. Several other concerns will probably build stores there also.

Council first listened to arguments for and against the expansion from Willowick Residents.

Mayor John Olsen said the ordinance would become law in 10 days unless he should veto it. He does not expect to do so, he added.

This addition extended Shoregate to the one that would be familiar to locals for years, and would also be the part razed and replaced with homes 50 years later. 29700 Lakeshore Blvd. was on the corner where Fairway blvd. cut through, and it opened as a Sears, Roebuck, and Co.

Sears Will Open New Store in Shoregate
Sears, Roebuck & Co., largest merchandising organization in the world, last night announced plans for its 10th store in Greater Cleveland-a large store in the Shoregate Shopping Center in Willowick.

The new store will carry Sears' complete lines of goods and services except apparel. It was described as a counterpart of the two-year-old Sears store at the Southland Shopping Center in Middleburg Heights.

James T. Griffin, Cleveland area group manager for the big retail chain and mail order house, said construction of the one-story, air-conditioned store building would be started about Aug. 1 and be completed for opening next summer.
Vote of Confidence
"The new Shoregate store is another 'grass roots' vote of confidence or the part of Sears, not only in the future of Cleveland, but in the tremendous growth potential of its suburbs as well," Griffin said.

The store will be the fourth built in Greater Cleveland since the company set out several years ago to reach into outlying suburbs.

First of these stores was the Middleburg Heights outlet. It was followed last year by the multimillion dollar department store at Southgate in Maple Heights.

The third store is set for opening about Nov. 1 1958 in North Olmsted.

Shoregate Center, largest in Lake County, is at Lake Shore Boulevard and E. 305th Street.

Shoregate Stores, Inc., developers of the center, will build the new store of 50,000 square feet to Sears' order.

Major merchandise departments will include home appliances, housewares, home modernization and repair supplies, building materials, sporting goods, auto parts, modern kitchens and hardware.

Features include a six-car service station and enclosed seasonal sales area for nursery stock, garden supplies and toys. Display and lighting fixtures will reflect styles used in most modern stores.

Sears has more than 720 retail stores in this country, accounting for about 75% of its total dollar sales.

Its large Lorain and Carnegie Avenue stores built some years ago were early forerunners of the current swing to suburban shopping meccas.

- May 16, 1958 Cleveland Plain Dealer

Sears, Roebuck, and Co. at Shoregate in Willowick, Ohio, opened it's doors to area shoppers on Thursday, September 10, 1959. It was managed by Hewitt "Lex" Schoonover.

Schoonover behind the new Shoregate Sears, this is how this area looks today.

Thursday Is Opener for Shoregate Sears
A new, modern air-conditioned store of Sears, Roebuck & Co.. which long has pioneered in suburban one-stop shopping in this country, will open Thursday in the big Shoregate Shopping Center on Lake Shore Boulevard in Willowick, Lake County.
James T. Griffin, Cleveland area manager for Sears, announced yesterday that a ribbon-cutting ceremony would be held at the store at 9:30 a.m. that day. Mayor John F. Olsen of Willowick and Hewitt A. (Lex) Schoonover, manager of the store, will participate.
On opening day there will be a sale of selected items in the 20 departments of the one-floor store, which features the latest concepts of merchandising.

Address of the store is 29700 Lake Shore Boulevard.

Sears officials said the Shoregate unit was the 10th to be built in this area, which extends from Painesville, on the east, to Elyria, Lorain County, on the west, and south to the Southland Shopping Center in Middleburg Heights.
Sears has been in Cleveland 28 years.

It's Chain's 4th In Outer Centers

The Shoregate store is Sears' fourth entrance into an outside shopping center project, where customers have the added opportunity to shop for food and at specialty stores with only one parking needed for the family automobile. Other Sears center stores are at Southland. Southgate and North Olmsted.

At Shoregate there are paved parking areas of 49 acres for 4,000 automobiles.

For the convenience of motorists Sears has built a six- car gasoline service station at the store.

Also, there is an outdoor garden center enclosure, of 2,000 square feet. This center will handle garden equipment.

The Sears store,of modern design with brick curtain-wall construction, has 208 feet of frontage on Lake Shore Boulevard. The gross store area is 41,200 square feet.

Indoor color accents are on turquoise, green and yellow. Basket-type fixtures for the display and merchandising of hardware and other allied items are new in this part of the country, according to Griffin.
Manager Here Since May, '48

Schoonover will have approximately 100 employees under his direction at the store.
The manager. a native of Stroudsburg, Pa., and a graduate of the University of Michigan (1947, business administration), was in charge of Sears' Five Points Store, 14922 St. Clair Avenue N. E., before his appointment to Shoregate. He started with Sears in July, 1947, at Mansfield, O. He has been with the company in Cleveland since May, 1948.
Schoonover said dozens of store from expert fitting of corsets 10 plumbing, roofing and siding.

He spoke of the famous Sears catalogue, the book that was the library hit at the recent American Fair in Moscow. Customers at Shoregate Sears can order any of 130,000 items from that book, from a 10-cent roller skate key to a $1,500 cabin cruiser.

Sears began as a mail-order house back in the 1880s. The catalogue division still accounts for a significant amount of the company's business.

An order, say for a power tool or a new back-to-school wardrobe, is rushed to the nearest mail-order plant. Within a day or two. the article arrives at the store for the customer to pick up or is shipped directly to his home.

One of World's Largest Buyers

Greater Clevelanders are well aware of Sears as a big selling institution, but they probably do not realize the company also is one of the world's largest purchasers of goods and services.

In Greater Cleveland, for ex- ample, 131 firms last year sup- plied Sears with merchandise valued at nearly $13,000,000.

In Ohio, in 1958. Sears purchased merchandise valued at $186,095,000 from 512 manufacturers in 143 communities.

"With the construction of our new store in Shoregate," said Griffin. "the use by Sears of local firms will be intensified."

World-wide, the activities of Sears, Roebuck & Co. contribute a growing chapter to the drama of distribution.

The head of this vast business is a former Clevelander, Charles H. Kellstadt, a native of Columbus, who managed Sears stores in Cleveland for 14 years. He was made president last year.

- September 9, 1959 Cleveland Plain Dealer