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605 N. Michigan Ave: A person familiar with the deal said NARE paid $47 million for the 85,000-square-foot retail and office building at the northeast corner of Michigan Avenue and Ohio Street. The sale price pales in comparison to the $140 million that former mall owner GGP paid for the property in 2016. "The deal adds to a run of transactions showing the dramatic loss of value of properties along North Michigan Avenue in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic."
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Audio and summary Why the Holdup Using Artificial Intelligence to Cut Illinois Government Costs? – Wirepoints
May 19, 2026
10 Comments
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
Note to readers from Mark Glennon re: Ukraine
May 6, 2026
4 Comments
Everybody needs a side hustle these days, and mine is Ukraine, where I am now.
Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer – Chicago’s struggling commercial real estate and more
April 22, 2026
5 Comments
Summary and audio linked here.
Audio and summary
He still overpaid.
Dem DEI folks sure have run Chicago into the ground lol
Investors invest. Doesn’t matter if they are profitable or losing investments. They invest. There’s no reason to come into the office or keep the lights on unless they are investing. So they look around for ‘investments’ good or bad and keep investing. I wouldn’t read too much into this except that this knife catcher is hoping to catch the handle rather than the blade. Good luck with that. Builders do the same. They build. They don’t stop building until they go bankruptcy or insolvent. They just keep building because that’s what builders do. They might build less in slow times… Read more »
Asset devaluation has an upside inn terms of future opportunity. But the big question is whether downtown Chicago can provide that opportunity – work from home, high taxes, a burdensome regulatory environment and especially crime – all headwinds. In sum I am questioning whether this market is yet another dip in the business cycle or something else — I think it the latter but one never knows.
With big risks often come big rewards, usually, but we are four and a half years into this mess. The last time people fled the Loop – in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, it took a decade to begin the 80’s bounce back. It wasn’t its former self until the mid-1990’s and then took off after that. The headwinds you describe “work from home, high taxes, a burdensome regulatory environment and especially crime” are surmountable, and with the exception of work from home, were all present in the 80’s and 90’s until the present day. The bigger headwinds which… Read more »
There’s another big one, debtsor. Even before Covid, WFH and the 2020 riots, the city was not on a sustainable fiscal path. Fundamentally, it doesn’t have a revenue model that works well enough to cover expenses accrued and accruing.
Mark – I fall in your camp. Some of this is subjective. I don’t see the value proposition for being in Chicago. The fact that the fiscal path is woeful – it won’t fix itself especially with a declining productive population and a political class which is not tied to success – makes me very bearish.
The city has been on an unsustainable path for decades but it’s really coming home now. To avoid those problems, during the 60’s-80’s, suburban corporate campuses were all the rage, leaving the city for the suburbs, as employees refused to travel into the loop. The now torn-down Allstate campus, Discover, McDonalds, Navistar, and the infamous Sears in Hoffman Estates. Sears built the largest tower in the world in 1973 but by 1992 it had moved to the suburbs. Now with the state of IL in such terrible shape, employers aren’t leaving Chicago for the suburbs, they are instead leaving the… Read more »
That’s one way to lower the property tax. Wow! What a bath. Better to be clear of the Chicago ‘Doom Loop’ than try and stick it out. The smart money is taking their losses and heading to brighter pastures in the booming Red States.
Sort of a funny story in a way I guess but I bought a property at a deep discount to appraised value back in the housing downturn in 2009. When I went to the assessor and she did lower the assessment. However on the very last day to file appeals I received an assessment card in the mail taking it back to the full assessed value before I bought the place. I was told that I bought the property at below market value so the assessed value was returning to what it should be and I could bring the issue… Read more »
I had to do the same – but it’s hard to fight facts when the loss sale is legit. When a sale is an anomaly, their argument holds more water. But in the Chicago ‘Doom Loop’ this isn’t the first deeply discounted property sale – there have been a number, some at 10 cents on the dollar. Now the data exists for a lower assessment. In fact this could accelerate loss sales now.
And they still got for 1 year more at the “old” value.
You ain’t seen nothing yet. Think homes in Detroit for $1!
BTW Old Joe, I see that Detroit is *finally* demolishing the old Packard plant…
But at least Detroit is trying (if the State will allow them) to address the problem.