Groupon, the provider of online deals that has warned it might run out of cash in the next 12 months, is terminating its lease early for its headquarters at 600 W. Chicago Ave. The company, which has laid off 1,000 employees in recent months, disclosed the lease termination in a regulatory filing. It said it paid $9.6 million to allow it to end its lease on Jan. 31, 2024 — two years earlier than expected.

In one of her last acts before leaving office, Mayor Lori Lightfoot backed down from her previous tough stance and agreed to a deal Friday to settle an investigation by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development that found City Hall effectively has engaged for years in environmental racism.

Groupon is ending its lease for its River North headquarters two years early as it risks running out of cash, creating a big leasing challenge for Chicago developer Sterling Bay much sooner than expected. Groupon’s lease for nearly 300,000 square feet was due to expire in January 2026, but the company paid a termination fee of $9.6 million to end its commitment early.

Matthew Wilson, an associate director at the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois and one of the report’s authors, said the increase in the jobless rate for Black women aged 20 to 24 — from 32 percent in 2019 to almost 60 percent in 2021 — was the study’s most staggering finding. Chicago and Illinois have also been much slower to recover from a spike in youth unemployment than the country as a whole, and they have seen racial disparities in jobless rates widen more, the report found.

The long line snaked down Lake Street from Wabash to State with hundreds of people from Ecuador waiting in line to get city-issued IDs. A man with the Consulate General of Chicago explained this is a big deal for many and this is only the third time the city has offered this to people from Ecuador.

While neighborhood parks could serve as outlets for teens to hang out, many young people no longer view parks as viable options. There were 28 homicide victims on park property between 2020 and 2022, the most in any three-year span since the 1990s.

During the parties’ closed-door negotiations after Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi’s reassessment of the 326-acre site – $197 million, which is just below the $197.2 million the Bears paid Churchill Downs Inc. for the old racetrack – the schools suggested a $95 million value for the land, for which the Bears would be responsible for paying $7.9 million in annual property taxes for the next two years. The Bears countered with a land value of $52.5 million and annual tax payments of $4.3 million.

There are at least 70 migrants – babies as young as 3 months old – living in a repurposed warehouse. All of them came from police stations. They have access to bathrooms and showers and they don’t have to sleep on the floor. The entire effort is being led not by the city, but by dozens of volunteers.

“In the most critical analysis, this cannot ever be viewed as merely just another slow and plodding government bureaucracy — a fixture in our social landscape of little real consequence. No, this dysfunction is among the primary causes of the unending violence in our communities. When violent actors are not met with immediate action and decisive consequences, they become encouraged and emboldened. When survivors don’t trust the justice system, they stop reporting crimes or take justice into their own hands. This has been the intolerable reality for decades.”

“Where is the money coming from?” one community forum participant reportedly asked. “Migrants don’t pay taxes. I understand helping people, but you have to start with your own home. Why don’t we have those resources with what’s happening here.”

Josh Gold, Uber’s senior director of policy and communications, advised the DNC to not be “caught off guard” when driver availability and numbers go down, telling him to “prepare appropriately for the upcoming convention.” He took an economic approach with Chicago: “(T)axes and fees on ride-share bring in around $130 million in revenue to the city of Chicago, some of which is jeopardized by this proposal…Less drivers and fewer trips means the city could lose tens of millions of dollars in projected revenue from ride-share taxes.”

Before she left her fifth floor office for the last time, Mayor Lori Lightfoot signed a volley of executive orders on Friday, including those establishing youth commissions and pension advance funds as well as ensuring the implementation of a “We Will Chicago” plan.

Plaintiffs argue using the former school as a temporary shelter violates zoning laws and the terms of the lease between CPS and the city, which allowed the property to be used as a police and fire training center until 2028, attorney Frank Avila said. The respite center plans pose “a potential threat to the safety, property and overall well-being” of South

The city kept 126 beds but isn’t using them. The state has 1,125 more beds from the makeshift hospital but says the city hasn’t asked for them. And the city is missing out on $30 million from Springfield to support migrants. Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez said he condemns the Republican governors in Texas and Florida for busing people to Illinois, “(b)ut we have not seen

David Greising, of the Better Government Association: “Unity sounds good, but unity behind what? Behind the idea of a less costly City Council, because of fewer committees? That’s good. But unity behind the outdated notion that Chicago’s mayor should be allowed to hand-select committee chairs, thereby emasculating a legislative body that has the right to behave as a separate branch of government? That’s a step backward.”