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The closing on Magnificent Mile will leave another empty storefront on the storied shopping strip, which has suffered the loss of Macy’s, Gap, Express and Uniqlo this year. The street’s vacancy rate has jumped to 26 percent, up from 15 percent in 2019, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
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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Bye bye Disney…
You can take CBS, ABC and any of the other alphabet soup companies with you that you want.
In the past I used to frequent the Mag Mile. There was a feeling about the whole stretch of stores that you just can’t get in the burbs. Fast forward to today. There is still a feeling on the MM you can’t get in the burbs. Unfortunately, that feeling is the pain of blind side attacks from groups of youths beating shoppers. If you are lucky you won’t be attacked, but you can watch the groups of chicago’s finest youths run into the stores empty handed and come streaming back out with looted property. For the obvious reasons I don’t… Read more »
As long as Gino’s East remains, we’re all good!
The mag mile is all womens stuff anyway, men don’t like to shop in general and the mag mile never offered much for them. No Home Depot, no hardware stores, no stereo stores, no hobby shops, just clothes, clothes and more clothes and jewelry. All of it overpriced, over taxed, and you don’t even get a chrome shopping cart to shop with. And for the priviledge of wasting your money there, you have to park blocks away, at ridiculous rates, and you get to lug all the bags of purchases manually back to your car. What about any of that… Read more »
Tourists, and lots of them, loved to shop there, especially tourists from smaller markets without any comparable shopping experience at home. It was nice around xmas time too. But that’s all gone now as people aren’t vacationing in the disgusting cities. Now resorts are PACKED everywhere they say, everything from the mom & pop RV cabin on the lake in northern MN all the way to the Cabo beaches. Chicago, NY, SF, LA, DC etc were purposely destroyed by antifa and the government let them get away with it. They reap what they sow.
That’s a really interesting point, and I wonder if retailers, as a whole, have thought about why downtown is of no interest to males. I don’t really think a Home Depot or the like is the answer, but a really cool hobby shop would seem interesting, or some state of the art hardware/power tool/many stuff would be fun. I vaguely remember when I was young going to an original Abercrombie & Fitch store, at least to gawk. Huge stuffed bear, uncool today. I know they still have a store, I think, but I haven’t been there in maybe seven years… Read more »
One of the best male/female co-tenancies I’ve seen is Hobby Lobby right next to Harbor Freight Tools. Only problem is my wife can spend way more time in Hobby Lobby than I can spend in Harbor Freight.
Harbor Freight is cool, cheap tools yes, but still cool.
Book stores are always a good male/female pull, but Borders closed, not sure what is there now.
You must have not been on the MM in some time, otherwise you would have noticed the number of Chicago males buying up overpriced Canada goose coats as the latest conspicuous sign of their chicness. Add that to the longtime conspicuous sign of Chicago males driving a low end 300 series BMW with a Cubs hat on backwards. However, you are correct that both the above mentioned fashion trends of younger Chicago males is dwarfed by Chicago females chicness of wearing sweat pants with Canada boots and a designer label coat and bag, probably with some cheese curds inside.
Don’t worry it will be replaced by dollar stores/wig shops/pawn shops/resale shops/etc. Also plenty of stores to fence stolen goods.
I miss the music pawn shops on south State. A pawn shop would offer me much more shopping fun than all the other overpriced new stuff.
investors will buy the real estate, and put in national franchises that are less of a developers risk. More likely well -known mass merchants like Jamba juice, Panda Express, Payless Shoes- large banal franchises who can pay whatever rent.
Ultimately Michigan Avenue will be re-zoned for “high density mixed use”- and gov’t sponsored housing can be built on the floors above.
The developers make a lot of money, so do the bondholders, and Mich. Avenue spearheads the Smart Growth/Smart city of UN Agenda 21.
This is what’s happening all over the Main Streets of towns and cities across the country.
Your right,
People can look the information up for Chicago and Illinois.
It is called CMAP
Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning or Go to 2040.
cmap.illinois.gov
There may be more websites, I only know of this one.
Keep a .watchful eye your town board meetings. Suburbs are loading up with Apartments. Soon it will be to change single family home zoning to accommodate multi-family units.
Anyone else notice their towns and school boards are rife with communists?
CBD shops will abound.
The Mag Mile will be dead within five years. Congrats to Lori and Lil Kim, with an assist from Jabba. Elections have consequences.
Madre De Dios! Not the Disney, owner of ABC ch7. Oh the abject shame! Abandoning a beautiful and inclusive city like Chicago! The girls aren’t going to be happy, the happy harpies.
Not a surprise if you live in the north suburbs. It is hard to find anyone who goes downtown any more for shopping, dinner or entertainment. And you can hardly find a woman who will go down shopping by herself, take her kids there, or go down to meet friends. Crime is the major issue, but so are exorbitant parking rates (and fear of parking lots), traffic on the Kennedy/Edens, and deteriorated Metra service. And cocktail prices with the sky high sales taxes are a killer for the “meet you for a drink “crowd. There just is no reason to… Read more »
After undergrad, I lived in the North Shore with my spouse as she had an excellent job in the Northern suburbs. I used to commute on the Metra every day – the 5:25 am train – and found the commuting experience pleasurable. (The line was the Chicago and Northwestern back then). The train was noticeably late only once, and that is because it stopped to take a guy having a severe heart attack off the train, completely understandable I used to sit with a well known legal author and he and I would have great conversations, especially since he was… Read more »
For me, the second round of riots was the most determinant reason behind my decision to never visit Michigan Ave. again for the rest of my life. That day, or the day before, Lori Lightfoot was preening around a boys’ picnic on Montrose beach with her personal photographer, to shame them for not wearing masks and not social distancing while spending quality time in the brush of the bird sanctuary. “It’s called a pandemic, people. This reckless behavior on Montrose Beach is what will cause us to shut down the parks and lakefront. Don’t make us take steps backwards…” is… Read more »
Seems appropriate that the local Wildlings continue North on Michgan Ave.