Chicago Population Sinks to 1920 Level

[wolverine]

^ Good and bad. Very bad if you are a growing business in an older building with owner's intentions of renovating to condos. There's been a couple news articles of businesses who were leasing 5-10 floors in some buildings and were trying to renew another 10 years on their lease only to be denied. Some building owners are trying to empty older office towers as quickly as possible for conversion.

The good news is the loop is diversifying....I guess. Wouldn't be my first choice place to live, but obviously people seem to like it. It will help the area become less of a daytime-only place and hopefully attract more nightlife. That will also be augmented with new downtown hotels opening, Already the $400 million renovation of a historic office building into a 600 room JW Marriott just opened this past fall.

BTW, "downtown" is the Chicago loop. But River North, Near North, and West Loop are quickly becoming office towers districts. Most people mistakingly consider the Magnificent Mile and Water Tower area to be downtown...but it isn't by the city's definitions despite all the commercial activity. With a massive office tower boom in these areas, it would be interesting to see where jobs are shifting and how they will grow. A recently released number shows that there will be 600,000 job openings this year within the city of Chicago. Even if loop vacancies fill up entirely, I doubt you'll see most of these downtown, but areas just outside of the loop where new office towers are proposed.