Thursday, October 16, 2025

Another Corporate Departure

(we're going through our bookmarks and locating a couple stories from earlier this month that got lost in the vacation time)

The corporate occupancy rate downtown - you know, the massive tax base Chicago relies on - keeps shrinking:

  • If you need more evidence of how badly downtown Chicago is struggling to recover from the pandemic, look no further than two recent pieces of news.

    The first wasn’t surprising. The office vacancy rate downtown hit a record 28% in the third quarter, according to data from real estate firm CBRE. Nearly three of every 10 square feet of office space in the central business district is going unleased right now. Brutal.

    But the second was a jolt. Walgreens, now owned by a New York private equity firm, said Monday that it’s departing its 200,000 square foot space at the Old Post Office, the massive building straddling the Eisenhower Expressway, which serves as a gateway to downtown from the west. The pharmacy chain will relocate an undisclosed number of workers — at one point, there were 1,800 in the Old Post Office space — to its Deerfield headquarters by the end of January.

As the article further states, it doesn't seem the Deerfield campus can accommodate all of those 1,800 workers - meaning either massive expansion or (more likely) drastic corporate downsizing, meaning not only does Chicago lose, but so does Illinois.

Just further evidence that the disease crippling Illinois would appear to be out-of-touch anti-business democrats. 

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20 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pondering a bird's eye view of the Loop, one muses on the practical ways to utilize natural barriors to isolate this area on all four borders, with our great lake on the east, rivers on the north and south and west.

Why, it's as if Mother Nature has provided the efficient means to effectively quarantine this area within a matter of minutes, raising all bridges in sync to a tune to be chosen by anyone with a better knack for sarcasm then I.

10/16/2025 02:14:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The old post office is in a dead part of town. It's a terrible location.

10/16/2025 05:16:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My family grew up on the sw side for well over a hundred years and now not only are all my family leaving but friends are leaving the state as well. The problem for the city and state is that not one of us have ever taken welfare which means we are not the welfare group taking but the ones that were supporting them. This city will be a shit-hole in less than 20yrs and the Bears know it.

10/16/2025 05:27:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

JB Pritzker strikes another corporate downsizing deal!
What a business genius!
Perhaps a Chinese pharmacy will move in?

10/16/2025 05:37:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How about stop linking Tribune articles that most of can’t read and refuse to pay for.

10/16/2025 05:52:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Downtown isn’t still “struggling to recover from the pandemic” five years ago, the city is being (intentionally) mismanaged through high taxes and higher crime that nobody wants to base their business there.

10/16/2025 07:32:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

remove most paywalls -

https://techpp.com/2025/09/01/best-12ft-ladder-alternatives/

10/16/2025 07:45:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Covid forced shutdowns showed the corporations that they don't need the space or spend the money, nice work progressives, did the progressives even think about the consequences of their actions, DEI at its finest.

10/16/2025 08:04:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I personally know of 2 hotdog stands that are thinking of opening up so everything is OK.

10/16/2025 08:10:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Kill off the rest of the business with a corporate head tax.

10/16/2025 10:05:00 AM  
Anonymous The Keesing Bandit said...

You can't blame everything on the pamdemic.

Now, kees me you fool!!!!

10/16/2025 11:18:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

But Rahm said the Walgreens initial move to the old post office building was only the start, and that he wasn’t going to rest until ALL of the Deerfield operation moved into Chiraq!

Rahm knew what he was doing, right?

10/16/2025 11:46:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Need more dispensaries in the area

10/16/2025 11:58:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

attention gov fat-ss please stay away from the golden corral buffet in joliet ill
we love the golden corral n do not want to do out of business

10/16/2025 01:03:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

maybe mamdani can hook up with conehead on the proper way to f-ck up a city and turn it into a ghetto

10/16/2025 01:39:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Comrade Conehead is stuck on stupid. He and the Pigster have bankrupt the city and State. Thier poisoned passion for destructiveness is remarkable and the insatiable. All the destruction is being covered up by the media Elitist Editorial Boards and their journalistic concubines. Never trust any pol or city media. They are masters of deceit.

10/16/2025 01:40:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Right. There are tons of people downtown and on the lakefront everyday. It is still beautiful. But, the pinheads running the show are clueless.

10/16/2025 01:53:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It didn’t bother Walgreens too much when they steamrolled all the local Mom and Pop run drug stores.

10/16/2025 04:47:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It’s going to be the year 2063 and they’ll still be saying we’re recovering from the pandemic and crime was only up because of it.

10/16/2025 06:35:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Deerfield is another lib haven. This will be interesting. Many will not want to move nawth. Housing is crazy high across the crook county line and now about to become wildly more expensive.

10/16/2025 07:15:00 PM  

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