Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer
April 22, 2026
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Summary and audio linked here.
-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
The city, run by a progressive Democrat who’s been in power for less than a year, has been working with developers to refine plans to repurpose buildings along and near LaSalle Street, once known as the Wall Street of Chicago. An announcement is expected by the summer after high interest rates delayed the project, she said.
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Audio and summary Illinois bill would override local law to allow homeless living in all public parks – Wirepoints
April 14, 2026
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If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago Fiscal Crisis Worse Than Pre-Bankruptcy Detroit, HIV Surge and Public Health Threat From Open Borders Goes Unreported
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Summary and audio linked here.
Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades
April 3, 2026
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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.
From walking thru the downtown area on visits in the last several years, you can see the downtown area is in decline. Converting these buildings to residential structures in and of themselves will not solve any problems. If they make these buildings low income housing, Chicago will just recreate the Cabrini Green and John Taylor Homes high-rise low income housing areas that became bastions of crime and city neglect. Chicago needs to become more business friendly, improve their dismal school system and get violent crime under control. Until they do this changing the occupants of buildings will do nothing.
What this article fails to mention is that Lori wanted to put a bunch of low income folks in rental units downtown. No mention of what the current Mayor wants to do with that idea. Low income tenants don’t support bars, restaurants, clothing stores and book stores, so Lori’s idea never made sense. Without some major taxpayer prop ups, this idea will never get close to helping the downtown situation
“Goldman says office buildings need a 50% price drop for residential conversion to be a real thing.”
https://fortune.com/2024/02/28/goldman-sachs-office-residential-conversions-price-cut/
Does anyone think our local central planners really understand the potential implications?
yes and no. They’ll wreck downtown but they don’t care.
The New York media today described a project in New York which was converted to residential. It is really expensive, and to make it work it has to be the right kind of building, with windows on three sides. The revamped 160 Water Street has rents starting at 3500 a month for studios and up to 10,000 a month for a penthouse, with one and two bedrooms going for 6000. Articles cite that low income housing could not be made to work. The “inner core” of these buildings must be sealed and hollowed out as unused space. Sounds like a… Read more »
hollowing out the inner core? imagine paying $$$ per sq foot only to have to seal off 1/3rd of it to make it usable!
Yes, the inner core is just too expensive to convert and is not suitable for residents. So it is sealed off empty space for the core of the building. The converters know to put this cost into their business cases. One more reason very few buildings make sense for conversion.
These are all older buildings. What will be the cost per unit to convert these, considering all the strict various Chicago building codes and the need for contractors to use the “correct” tradesmen? Somehow, I don’t think these will be affordable housing units, unless the developers are subsidized by the city.
Someone brought this up before, but the plumbing is thought to be an issue for conversion of office space to apartment units, i.e. how do you completely re-plumb a high-rise office? I guess with enough taxpayers $$$ and time it’s doable. Affordable or practical – I don’t know. I knew a guy who converted a dairy barn hay loft into several apartments – basically created ‘cubes’ in the loft space, but it wasn’t a high rise. Apparently the rats loved it.
Yes, with enough taxpayer subsidies, almost anything in IL is possible.
“We are very supportive of plans to transition some office buildings into residential to provide affordable housing,” Jaworski said. “We obviously want the downtown of Chicago to continue to be a vibrant place.”
A vibrant downtown or low-income housing downtown, it can’t be both.
Let’s keep the scum out of DT
Please don’t get Zippy all upset, Zippy will
Start screaming that he is a black man and has a family to raise. Zippy could not figure
Out how to open a paper bag with two hands.
Converting LaSalle business district, which is served by all Chicago’s highways, commuter railways, and CTA services, into quasi residential is a profoundly stupid idea, whether from tax-basis viewpoint, or social-engineering basis. Past two Mayors and their Commissioners have no long-term governance experience amongst its department heads, and yes, it truly shows. Mostly “merit” picks, administrators picked for their progressive politics rather than legitimate experience, blindly promote real estate projects modeled after other “big city” projects, without considering related impacts on surrounding properties, dynamics of socio-economic interventions, or long-term affects upon municipal revenues and neighboring properties business-economics. Nope, if LA or… Read more »
Streeterville, the progressives’ goal is to destroy the Loop. It’s a certain mindset that the progressive has. After the Loop is destroyed, the progressive will look around and say “Look at the nice thing we destroyed”. LaSalle St. always has been a monument to Chicago’s corporate wealth derived from commodities and financial services. And now that they are in charge, they want to destroy it. You must understand: they don’t care. They renamed Chicago’s most iconic street to some long convoluted name in honor of Chicago’s first resident that married underage daughter of a native american tribal leader in an… Read more »
Traveling monument seeks to teach hidden story of Kitihawa DuSable …Why can’t we Google and find anything on Kitihawa? “This is again so much tied to the ways, and who gets to write history,” Joseph said. “They end up calling Chicago the White City; a nation that focuses white men, white men with money, white men who can read, white men with power as the makers of history.” “To then say this is a city that was really started and thrived and flourished under an indigenous woman and a Black man of Haitian decent. That doesn’t fit the story,” Joseph… Read more »
Excellent take here. Keep the scum out of DT.
Jorge and Louisa soon to “move on up”after their arrival in the Nuevo Chicago. Si!
They won’t keep the Chicago name. That’s just the french transliteration of an indian word for stinky onion, aka the ramp, as illegal foragers call them. New Amsterdam became New ‘York’ after the medieval northern English city, York, when the British took over. The same will happen to Chicago, it’ll be New Michoacan..
Here, Debtor, we have this monstrosity in front of the Evanston Public Library; I have to endure it every time I go to work (my office is in the downtown Evanston Public Library). It’s all “hearts and flowers” up here, donchyaknow: DuSable crowned for Black History Month January 31st, 2024 https://evanstonroundtable.com/2024/01/31/black-history-month-evanston-wreathed-dusable/ “Sculptor Erik Blome stands with his 9-foot bust of Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, crowned with a wreath, on Jan. 23 next to the Evanston Public Library. The wreath, created by Chicago florist John Caleb Pendleton, is in honor of Black History Month, which begins Thursday… the artwork was installed… Read more »
Or, with a little modification, after a year it could be the new black hero, George Floyd. Michael Brown, Jakob Blake or the WI parade mass murderer would be a stretch , though. Evanston would be fine with any of them having a place of prominence and worship.
Explorer? Why is he an explorer? Wouldn’t he technically be a colonizer?
The Truefitt & Hill store can go ahead an move, if it hasn’t already.
LaSalle Street will be Cabrini Green Part 2.