"Reimagine" the Past

Let's see....take multiple million dollar properties along with millions of commercial square footage off the tax rolls pretty much forever....what could go wrong?

• The city of Chicago has announced plans to convert a collection of empty office buildings in the city's downtown into mixed-used and residential towers.

  The initiative, called LaSalle Street Reimagined, would convert nearly 2.3 million square feet (213,676 square metres) of vacant office buildings into residences and retail in the centre of Chicago, an area known as The Loop.

  The plan incentivises developers to make the conversions and locally owned businesses through grants to inhabit vacant storefronts, building lobbies and former banking floors – while incorporating housing into the towers above.

Correct us if we're wrong, but didn't Chicago used to have giant sets of high rises dedicated solely to housing? We seem to remember spending a lot of time answering calls there. 

Elevators never worked, hallways smelled like piss, shit and weed, holes in the walls to make multiple apartment "suites," Chain link fencing in the breezeways, surrounded by rats, and often raining canned goods when we pulled up to a call.

But damn, we never missed Leg Day, climbing the stairs three and four times a night.