Utterly amazing what's going on in a town literally everybody is abandoning (Chicago: construction, hippest)

[edsg25]

We do know that everybody (and I do mean literally everybody) is abandoning Chicago whose population is heading for "0" by the next decade (although that figure may be a bit conservative and the drop much lower) long before.....gasp!!....Houston passed us up as the third largest city.

So isn't it amazing how many megaprojections are being planned in what is basically a ghost town?

No little plans: More than $20 billion of megaprojects in Chicago's pipeline - Chicago Tribune

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by edsg25

We do know that everybody (and I do mean literally everybody) is abandoning Chicago whose population is heading for "0" by the next decade (although that figure may be a bit conservative and the drop much lower) long before.....gasp!!....Houston passed us up as the third largest city.

So isn't it amazing how many megaprojections are being planned in what is basically a ghost town?

No serious person really believes that Chicago will drop to ZERO, but it is rapidly showing signs that should cause concern. The long history of Chicago high rise development shows a very unhealthy boom and bust cycle that routinely results in overbuilding and poor allocation of assets.

From the same article:

There's no guarantee all, or even most, of the developments will happen. The biggest developments have the most money at stake, and take the most years to complete, making them vulnerable to unforeseen circumstances such as a recession.

"The bigger the project, the lower the probability" of a project being completed

No little plans: More than $20 billion of megaprojects in Chicago's pipeline - Chicago Tribune

The article details the busts that many experienced developers have endured, from the failed Spire to the decades long disaster of Block 37.

It is also telling that unlike major projects in the past that have involved Chicago adding necessary infrastructure to enable the smooth movement of necessary deliveries and such, not Chicago's internal departments are now more likely to just tear down such things and then regret the resulting bottlenecks created -- The Extension and Removal of Ogden Avenue | Forgotten Chicago | History, Architecture, and Infrastructure

The real problem is that despite an abundance of dreamers in the hippest parts of Chicago the city is suffering from decades of neglect that trace back to the incompetence of Daley taking care of his insider pals instead of investing in the City. Sometimes it takes a decade to see these results -- Corruption Scandal Loosening Mayor Daley's Grip on Chicago - The New York Times Sadly now is O'Hare is far behind the other peer airports -- O'Hare growth badly lags peer airports
And the lag in Chicago housing prices compared to other cities means that over a HUNDRED BILLION in equity has leaked out of the area -- Housing recovery lags other big metro areas

Combined with trends that reach well beyond Chicago regarding the pace of Artificial Intelligence replacing once desirable positions with excellent compensation -- The Robots Are Coming for Wall Street it would be foolish to assume that there will be anything that gives planners for our region other than abject terror -- among even the wealthiest in the region jobs losses will be a reality. Most troubling, since the firms that are global leaders in AI are orders of magnitude more capable of putting resources behind their efforts than any of the firms in Chicago -- https://www.inc.com/lisa-calhoun/mit...companies.html Just as a level set, there are well over 10x as many people working for Google / Alphabet in Mountain View (a town that is just a little bigger than Evanston...) vs Chicago which does not have the catchet of even its Ann Arbor office let alone NYC or European locations. Even geeky kids coming out of UIUC will much prefer relocation to places where the looming threats brought on by dysfunctional politics are not a concern -- for the top researchers who don't want to dramatically shake up their lives at Carnegie Mellon or UT Austin those cities also offer Google locations and lower COL...

[Vlajos]

Chet, the Spire developer was not experienced. He was an amateur. And Freed is hardly a top notch developer.

[damba]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

Chet, the Spire developer was not experienced. He was an amateur. And Freed is hardly a top notch developer.

Agreed. I do like the Gensler plan though. For those who may have missed it:

https://chicago.curbed.com/2016/6/3/...-gateway-tower

[BigLake]

I was discussing those projects with a buddy last night. If there was not the backdrop of the recent census, one would think Chicago is America's boomtown. It's unbelievable the amount of large projects and investments going on in the city, probably more than any time in its history. The population loss belies the building going on in this city. If you dig just one layer down, you will notice that this does not equate.

[BigLake]

Originally Posted by damba

Agreed. I do like the Gensler plan though. For those who may have missed it:

https://chicago.curbed.com/2016/6/3/...-gateway-tower

You know this is purely a concept and not a formal proposal, right. In other words, the Gensler plan will not be happening. I will say I hope a developer draws on it for inspiration for a bona fide proposal.


Uhhhmmm, hello Related.

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

Chet, the Spire developer was not experienced. He was an amateur. And Freed is hardly a top notch developer.

The fate of the Spire and Shelbourne Development / Garrett Kelleher is less about "amatuer" than it was about the unfortunate confluence of events that wiped out his ability to pay for the project -- I'd hardly call a firm that did hundreds of millions in other projects amateur -- Articles about Shelbourne Development Group - tribunedigital-chicagotribune

Fact is the nature of dramatic shifts is that they generally come as a SUDDEN shock -- look at the MOUNTAIN of panic that accompanied the rise of the VIX in 2008 -- https://www.google.com/finance?q=IND...Lo_SjAGJwq-wBQ

Another downgrade in Chicago's or Illinois' debt rating could be a similar trigger that would set an unprecedented row of dominoes to falling...

[damba]

Originally Posted by BigLake

You know this is purely a concept and not a formal proposal, right. In other words, the Gensler plan will not be happening. I will say I hope a developer draws on it for inspiration for a bona fide proposal.


Uhhhmmm, hello Related.

Yes, I am aware ROTFL. You can step down off that high horse already, amigo.

Don't act like everyone who peruses these forums has already seen everything posted on the interwebs for every single Chicago project(!)

[3goodmonths]

yes beautiful buildings are going up that only millionaires will live in and millions of poor who like our skyline will stand in front of these buildings and take pictures of buildings we will never know what is like to live in and a majority will now know what it is like to work in these buildings, unless they are front desk or maintenance.

[NOLA101]

Originally Posted by BigLake

I was discussing those projects with a buddy last night. If there was not the backdrop of the recent census, one would think Chicago is America's boomtown. It's unbelievable the amount of large projects and investments going on in the city, probably more than any time in its history. The population loss belies the building going on in this city. If you dig just one layer down, you will notice that this does not equate.

Chicago is the third largest U.S. metro, but isn't even in the Top 10 of multifamily units u/c in the U.S. There isn't that much housing being built in Chicago, and certainly not comparable to past decades in Chicago or other U.S. metros.

I mean, the entire South Loop, West Loop, and parts of Streeterville and River North were pretty much a construction zone from the late 90's to around 2008.

For historical standards, this will probably be one of the slowest growth decades in Chicago history.