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State Street has a record level of retail and commercial vacancies, around 30%, in 2024. Local leaders said that's a 12% increase in empty storefronts from last year.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Don’t need a “committee” to realize problem is high-frequency of crime in downtown, of real danger to people’s personal safety, not absence of planters and banners. Don’t need a “committee” that trots out the same ineffective street landscaping and hard pavement ideas which fail to address underlying socio-economic problems of unfettered street-crime, absence of effective policing, failure of courts to sentence prison-time to repeat offenders, and permissive policies which allow underage criminals to repeatedly commit crimes without any ramifications. And Chicago has a long long history of appointing these “committees”, composed of same two or three dozen politically-connected docile minions… Read more »
It will take another generation to do anything.
Crime scares people away for good.
High income earners are fleeing the state in record numbers, they tell all their friends how much they like the new states they moved too.
Ken Griffin told Chicago about the crime issue, and they told him “Do not let the door hit you in the rear”.
IF THE RIGHT LEADERS WERE IN PLACE…..CHICAGO WOULD STILL BE GREAT!!
Sue, repurpose your MAGA hat. Change the G into a C and you’re all set.
When the Chairman of the Board, Frank
Sinatra would sing my kind of town Chicago
Is had some meaning. That time is long passed. The lyrics should now be, My kind
Of Dump Chicago is. It will take generations
If at all to change the path the city is on.
The CEO of Chicago Loop Alliance claims the Loop is clean and safe. If that’s the starting point for these meetings, then they’re simply wasting time. You can’t solve a problem until you admit you have one and the city’s problem is not image, it’s crime.
You would have to be out of your mind to buy, build or rent anything downtown till after the riots.
This is not a ‘if you build it, they will come’ scenario. We aren’t coming back. I used to go downtown every day for two decades and spend money down there on my days off, for shopping at xmas time, theatere before it went too woke, fancy restaurants, just hanging out often. Now I don’t ever go downtown and I cross into the city limits only slightly more often.
Several years ago I took a new job in Evanston (I live here). The agency HQ is in Chicago (on Lake Street), and one of the requirements I had before I took the gig is that I *not* ever be required to visit agency HQ, or even step foot in Chicago for any work – related reasons. They agreed, and I will never step foot in Chicago again – and I lived there from 1978 until 2015. It was a great place to live… now it’s simply a ruin…
Well GM. I used to live in Detroit (more precisely Highland Park, Michigan — no don’t even think Highland Park, Illinois) and I couldn’t go back if I wanted to. My old crib as well as the entire block was bulldozed.
Yep, the streets is still there without a single house on it!
Speaking of blocks with no houses, or in my mind, I read ‘vacancy’, i heard on Shaun Thompson’s show that the entire block on the East side of State St. from Monroe to Adams is completely vacant now, and State St. vacancy is the worst ever!
I USED TO DO THE SAME AS YOU…….NOT ANYMORE!!
Mrs. O’Leary’s cow could do a better job of revitalizing downtown than this crew.
Gotsta gussie up all the empty retail space on mag mile & downtown with some temp pop-up stores for big dem convention party….we don’t want folks getten the wrong impression that it’s a train wreck
Like his rival Newsome did for the worlds largest fetty manufacturer, the Chinese, when they visited SF, look for Pritzger to “ find “ the money to put up a Potemkin village until the DNC leaves town.
I vote for midnight basketball games on deserted State Street.
Just roll some hoops out there on every block.
or maybe some “drifting” around the watertower