Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyguy_7
With the laughable suburban vacancy rates, this development makes no sense to me. To think; Zurich could have gotten 130 N Franklin off the ground.. Not to mention their employees could have perhaps sparked the Spire. Wishful thinking I know, but get it together Rahm!
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See that's what a lot of people don't seem to realize. A lot of companies in the suburbs just look at their buildings like temporary husks to occupy for 10 years and then turn over to the class B market after that. Just look at the Navistar move about 7 or 8 years ago where they left a nearly brand new office building that they had a long term lease on (one that is STILL going) and took space in another big ass, brand new office building. They've been paying double rent all these years as a result. Sounds like a lot of money to us, but to a multinational corporation it's really chump change off their bottom line.
I don't think the market is right yet to start seeing the industries like insurance or pharma moving into downtown, but I can tell you that it could happen in the future: see below.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyguy_7
Several industries just wouldn't function in the city and it makes absolute sense.
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It's less of an issue of "wouldn't function in the city" and more of an issue of "wouldn't function in the loop". The key thing to keep in mind is that the city may wind up more appealing to such uses in the future as we see things happening like the plans for IMD being reworked and the technology scene continuing to boom. The problem we have right now is that we have no good sites to offer a company like Abbott or Takeda or Baxter. We could very well accommodate their huge campuses in the IMD if the city were to get serious about building up the available infrastructure there. Of course the biggest factor with these companies is that the talent pool necessary to operate is all in the north suburbs now. All the engineers, researchers, etc. are mainly baby boomers and mainly living in the northern burbs. This makes it very difficult for one big pharma to just pull up stakes and head for the city.
That's where the tech boom and tech institutes planned for the core come into play. As the population of baby boomers in the workforce begins to fall, there will be a lot more pressure to relocate to the city IF we can generate and retain engineering and scientific talent downtown. Rahm should really push to try to get a major medical research institute located in the IMD. If we can just reinforce that area with a few more talent generators, then we might have a chance at luring some of these suburbs industries into their own technology park downtown. As we all know, the skyline is already trying very hard to grow through the West Loop towards the IMD, so maybe we could see a 50 story Takeda Tower or something in 20 years at Ashland and Roosevelt if we play our cards right.