A wave of corporate exits sends chills through Chicago’s business elite

Google expanded its footprint in Chicago last Wednesday, agreeing to buy Postmodern Signs in the Loop in a much-needed jolt to the heart of the city’s central business district.

The James R. Thompson Center, designed by German-born architect Helmut Jahn of Illinois State, came as Chicago’s business community made a big deal, fighting the narrative that the tech giants were fleeing the area.

Boeing announced in May that it would sell its headquarters in a tower in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood for a campus outside Washington, D.C. In June, Caterpillar, known for its bright yellow earthmoving equipment, decided to move its base from a suburb of Chicago to a city near Dallas.

A third blow came next week when billionaire Ken Griffin announced that hedge fund Citadel would be moving its headquarters from the Loop skyscraper to Miami.

A string of high-profile exits has tarnished Chicago’s reputation as a big-shouldered business capital.

“Chicago has a tight-knit business community, so it’s certainly sad to see them all go,” Roger Hochschild, CEO of Discover Financial Services in the Chicago suburbs, told the Financial Times.

While Boeing and Caterpillar are seen as symbolic losses, Citadel’s departure is gut-wrenching in a city where Griffin has provided consistent and nonpartisan material support.

He has donated more than $600 million to Chicago organizations, funding the rebuilding of the city’s pedestrian and bicycle paths along Lake Michigan. Two weeks after the headquarters announcement, it awarded another $110 million to 40 organizations, including universities, museums and hospitals, leading local civic leaders to speculate that the grants might be the last.

The move coincided with a rise in gun violence that has made headlines elsewhere. The trend has sparked confusion among corporate executives.

“I’m very concerned about corporate immigration,” said the longtime Chicago business and civic leader. Compared to Dallas, Miami and Atlanta, Chicago isn’t considered a winner right now.

Local incentives say there’s more to Chicago’s business health than meets the eye.

World Trade Chicago, the city’s public-private economic development agency, said the Chicago metropolitan area added 6,656 businesses in the first two years of the coronavirus outbreak, a 2.6 percent increase. The number of professional jobs – the types of office jobs held by Boeing, Caterpillar and Citadel – increased by 3.4 percent.

In the year By 2021, there were 173 major residential developments and expansions in Chicago and an estimated 11,000 jobs created, according to the WBC. In the first half of this year, there were 96 such “Chicago pro-Chicago” decisions.

“The rumors of Chicago’s demise are greatly exaggerated,” said David Kasper, chief executive of Bank of Montreal’s U.S. arm at BMO Harris in Chicago. BMO Harris’ lineage predates the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which leveled much of the city.

When it announced in June that it was splitting into three separate companies, Michigan-based food group Kellogg said it would make its largest headquarters in Chicago.

Abbott Laboratories, a medical device and healthcare company based in the suburbs of Chicago, leases offices in the city’s most famous skyscraper, the Willis Tower.

Hochschild Discover, the credit card and finance company, is expanding a new advanced analytics center after opening a call center last year in Chatham, a city with a high unemployment rate.

Salesforce, a technology company based in San Francisco, plans to put its name on a new glass tower that will hold the Chicago River. “Technology has been the fastest growing part of our economy over the last 10 years,” said Jack Lavin, CEO of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.

Since the epidemic began, shootings have increased in many US cities, but in Chicago, control is a concern. In the year Shootings in the city more than halved in 2020, with 4,077 people shot and 774 killed, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab. Last year, shootings rose again, with 4,419 people shot and 801 killed.

Shootings in the Loop, a business, government and tourism hub, rose from two in 2019 to 27 last year. In the year A dozen more shootings have taken place in the district since July 12, 2022.

Before Citadel’s announcement, Griffin likened the city to “Afghanistan, good day” because of the violence and said he found it more difficult to recruit workers to Chicago when they “read the headlines.”

The business community is “deeply concerned” about the damage to the city’s reputation and reputation, said Lawrence Mull, president of the Civic Federation, a tax and financial watchdog organization that “has a particular impact on Chicago’s economic development and business attraction.”

Chicago businesses are also coping with workplaces altered by the pandemic. Office occupancy in the Loop averaged 46.3 percent in June, according to the Chicago Loop Alliance. In the year In the weeks leading up to the 2020 lockdowns, the city’s offices are nearly 100 percent occupied, according to security firm Castle Systems.

Michael Fassnacht, CEO of World Business Chicago, traveled to London and Paris with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot last month to attract European businesses to Chicago. He also wanted to “learn what we do best” to continue investing in the Loop, including prioritizing “multimodal placemaking” that combines office, commercial, arts and residential spaces.

Google said the $105 million it will spend on the Thompson Center will help serve a hybrid workforce that works in and out of the office. It already employs 1,800 in Chicago’s Fulton Market neighborhood. “We’re in the midst of a major Loop revival, establishing a presence in Chicago’s central business district,” the tech company said.