A look at possible destinations for USOC headquarters: Sears Tower

Chicago -- The Sears Tower has lost its crown as the world's tallest building. It will soon be surpassed as even Chicago's tallest. Will the iconic skyscraper also lose its name if the U.S. Olympic Committee moves in?

The USOC is considering whether to relocate from Colorado Springs to Chicago, where it has been offered space in the Sears Tower and at the city's Navy Pier. A couple of Chicago media outlets, citing anonymous sources, have reported that the tower's owners are open to renaming the building if it would help sway the decision.

But while the suggestion to rename Wrigley Field is stirring up a passionate debate in Chicago, the possibility of a new name for the Sears Tower has barely caused a ripple. That's probably because the reports got so little attention here - even some people who work in the building hadn't seen them.

For the record, Sears left its namesake 110-story tower for the suburbs in 1995. The building has had several owners since then, including the latest, an investment group that paid $825 million in 2004. Nothing but tradition would prevent the building from being renamed. A spokesman for the building declined to comment about the possibility.

For 22 years after it was completed in 1974, the Sears Tower was the world's tallest building at 1,451 feet. Then the Petronas Towers in Malaysia surpassed it. Many Chicagoans took issue with the loss because the Malaysian towers were allowed to count their spires, which are part of the structure, while the Sears Tower couldn't count its TV antennas, which are not.

By including the tallest antenna - which brings the height to 1,730 feet - and by using other measures, such as the height of the roof and the highest occupied floor, the Sears Tower kept part of the title a bit longer. But it has been or soon will be surpassed in those categories, too. It remains the tallest building in North America, but it will lose that crown when the 2,000-foot Chicago Spire, now under construction less than two miles away, is completed in a few years.

The loss made having a Sears Tower address only slightly less prestigious. Far more damaging to the tower's appeal, however, was the threat of terrorism after the 9/11 attacks. Being in a prominent high-rise was no longer so desirable, and the 2006 charges against seven men for conspiring to blow up the Sears Tower couldn't have helped. (The retrial for six of those men is under way in Miami after the jury deadlocked in their first trial.)

The building's owners took several steps to boost security after 9/11, including installing metal detectors and key card turnstiles.

Tom Garritano, who works on the 8th floor of the building as communications director for the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, said security is tight without being overly intrusive.

"I feel safer here than I do in many other places," he said.

A sagging economy and tough competition from new buildings nearby also has hurt the Sears Tower's efforts to find tenants. It has a vacancy rate of about 19 percent, according to a building spokesman.

Still, that means about 10,000 workers from more than 100 companies report there each day.

They work in a building that is accessible to all major highways downtown and nearly every mass transit and commuter rail line - one of the reasons Sears originally chose the location for its headquarters. Elevators are plentiful and arranged in such a way that waits aren't unusually long, tenants say.

On the highest floors, such as the tourist-mobbed "Skydeck" on the 103rd-floor, visitors on a clear day can see four states - Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan - and feel the building move in high winds.

"I love it when the building sways - it's cool," said Tom Milberg, an attorney with the law firm of Schiff Hardin, who can see his house on Chicago's North Side from his office on the 72nd floor.

While the Sears Tower has lost its title as the world's tallest, it hasn't lost its place among the city's towering skyscrapers.

"It's pretty impressive and remarkable, with all the tall buildings in Chicago, the way it still dominates the skyline," Garritano said.