Finally, a Use for the Old Sears: Covid-19 Vaccine Center

Vast floor plans, sprawling parking lots and easy access to highways that attracted property developers and shoppers during the retailer’s heyday are drawing the attention of health officials. The stores are well-known destinations, and house enough space for workers and vaccine recipients to adhere to social-distancing guidelines.

“You know where the tools were kept and where the appliances were,” said Brian Hanft, director of public health in Cerro Gordo County, Iowa, where on Monday officials agreed to set up a Covid-19 vaccine administration site inside an old Sears location. “It takes you back a little bit.”

Vacant retail spaces have emerged as anchors of an ad hoc public-health infrastructure in the U.S. since coronavirus began to spread. In some parts of the country, struggling or closed malls have been used since early last year as drive-through testing sites that are now being expanded to include vaccine administration.

Erin Stewart, a school nurse in New Hampshire, recently pulled her Ford C-Max Hybrid into an old Sears Auto Center, rolled down the window and let a National Guard member inject her with a dose of the Moderna Inc. Covid-19 vaccine. The 48-year-old mother of two used to buy clothes and winter gear for her children at the Concord, N.H., store before it closed down. This was her first time at the auto center.

“It was no weirder than anything else this year,” said Ms. Stewart. After the shot, she sat in her car for 30 minutes as National Guard members and a physician assistant walked by multiple times and tapped on her window to make sure she was OK.

“It will always be sentimental to me now,” she joked of the store.

When Cayuga Health System in upstate New York began scouting Covid-19 testing sites in Tompkins County early last year, it looked for easy-to-access locations with large parking lots where it could set up tents as well as indoor storage space for protective equipment and other supplies, said John Turner, its vice president of public relations. The Shops at Ithaca Mall was off an interstate with a large parking lot and the state had closed retail hubs during an emergency shutdown.

The hospital operator initially leased a vacant Bon-Ton department store from property owner Namdar Realty Group and subsequently agreed to lease the former Sears space at the back of the mall, which is also home to big-box retailers that are still operating, including Target and Best Buy.

“With all the retail gone you’ve got this big open area. You’re able to actually bring people through,” Mr. Turner said. The medical group has set up a registration site, vaccine administration stations and waiting areas where vaccine recipients are observed after inoculation in case they have adverse reactions.

Once the nation’s largest retailer, Sears has closed hundreds of stores in recent years as it lost shoppers to discount and home-improvement chains. Hedge-fund manager Edward Lampert, who took control in 2005, slashed investments in stores as part of a failed bid to revive the chain. Sears filed for bankruptcy protection in 2018.

After it emerged in 2019 as a private company controlled by Mr. Lampert, it continued to shut locations and try to redevelop the space. Some former Sears stores have been turned into health clubs and grocery stores, others have been carved up into restaurants and entertainment centers. But many of them continue to sit empty.

In Essex County, N.J., an informational flier about Covid-19 vaccinations mailed to homes featured a photo of an old Sears site at the Livingston Mall where residents of some municipalities are expected to receive their doses.

In some parts of the country, large parking lots are former Sears sites’ main draw. North of Tampa, the Florida Department of Health in Pasco County operates a drive-through vaccine clinic in the parking lot of a former Sears at the Gulf View Square Mall. The health department had previously used the Sears Auto Center at the site for Covid-19 testing.

“It was vacant at the time we needed it, and the logistics of parking and a place to have staff out of the weather made it a great location,” a county spokeswoman said.

Officials in Cerro Gordo County in Iowa initially envisioned a drive-through vaccine site, either by renting out a carwash or using the auto-servicing component of the Sears site. But they soon found that ultracold weather and the cost of heating such a space, plus the need to evaluate patients after giving them shots posed challenges. It instead decided to administer the shots inside the old Sears store, where there is room for shot recipients to line up, receive doses and sit for observation.

The property’s owner, Southport Shopping Center Limited Partnership, offered the site rent free, and the county will pay for the cost of utilities and taxes.

“When it’s 20-below out, I don’t want people who are 65-plus years old standing outside,” said Mr. Hanft, the county’s public-health director. “We’ll be able to get a lot of people in that space standing in line.”

Brett Schoneman, the listing broker for the Iowa Sears, grew up about 30 miles away and recalls going there for family photos, appliance purchases and oil changes. Each year he would circle toys he wanted for Christmas from the retailer’s catalog. People living within 50 miles of the store in either direction would drive there to shop.

“Everything was at Sears,” he said.

—Suzanne Kapner contributed to this article.

Write to Sarah Krouse at [email protected]