Crain's Chicago Business

THE ARTS: Theaters and other venues navigate the omicron surge. PAGE 3

GREG HINZ: State GOP is working to put the puzzle together. PAGE 2

CHICAGOBUSINESS.COM | JANUARY 24, 2022 | $3.50

Mart reboot LESS THAN 10 YEARS after the Merchandise Mart was crowned as the epicenter of Chicago’s tech scene, the historic Art Deco property is launching a major makeover to try to regain its shine.

Even before COVID-19 hammered demand for downtown workspace, the owner of the hulking 3.7 million-square-foot building watched as the Old Post Office—a cavernous structure redeveloped in the Mart’s image— supplanted it as the more modern

destination of choice for tenants seeking massive floor plates along the Chicago River. The trendy Fulton Market District, meanwhile, became the tech-firm magnet the Mart was early in the last decade, when startup incubator 1871 and Motorola Mobility moved in and companies like Yelp and Braintree followed.

Now, with the public health crisis lingering and the rise of remote work pushing some big Mart tech tenants to try to shed space in the

building, owner Vornado Realty Trust plans to plow tens of millions of dollars into renovations aimed at giving the building a new competitive edge.

The project—said to cost more than $60 million, according to real estate brokers familiar with the plan—comes just a few years after Vornado completed a $40 million upgrade to the building, illustrating how difficult the pandemic has made life for landlords. And against a backdrop of near-record-

high office vacancy, the renovation will serve as a high-profile test of what it takes for downtown buildings to compete with Fulton Market and other emerging hotspots that have defied the pandemic with leasing wins.

Every downtown office land-

lord trying to spruce up a building for a post-COVID world “is doing the best they can in their own way,” says Glen Weiss, executive vice president at New York-based Vornado. “We just hope that our See MART on Page 20

Giants like McDonald’s, Kraft Heinz and Mondelez leave shareholders to guess at the bottom-line impact

BY ALLY MAROTTI

Here’s how the neighborhood, the onetime mecca of Black Chicago, became the city’s hottest market for new homes. PAGE 23

JOHN R.BOEHM

BY DENNIS RODKIN

Kareem Edwards

Merchandise Mart owner Vornado Realty Trust is aiming to begin work on the revamp this year.

Net-zero vows come without cost estimates

Inside Bronzeville’s comeback

To listen to a podcast about Bronzeville, go to ChicagoBusiness.com/FourStarBronzeville

GENSLER

A $60 million-plus makeover of the mammoth structure will test the ability of older downtown buildings to compete with new hot spots in an office market transformed by COVID BY DANNY ECKER

McDonald’s, Kraft Heinz and Mondelez trumpeted recent vows to reduce their net carbon emissions to zero by 2050, pleasing climate activists pressing for action to curb global warming.

They’ve had less to say about the costs of hitting that target, a matter of some concern to another important constituency: shareholders expecting investment returns.

Achieving the net-zero goal will require a massive and expensive overhaul of product lines and supply chains. The costs of the decades-long effort could squeeze profits, pitting the companies’ climate agendas against their obligations to investors. That conflict would test their commitment to eliminating carbon emissions.

“When you hold a company accountable for some of these net-zero targets, I think there’d be a lot of shareholders that would not expect the company to be purely altruistic,” says Adam Fleck, a director of equity research at Morningstar, who tracks environmental, social and corporate governance issues. “It doesn’t make sense for a company to be net zero if it’s costing shareholders cash flow and return.”

Yet the likely costs and bottom-line impact for companies remain a mystery. Ordinarily, executives subject proposed projects to rigorous analysis of likely costs and returns, measuring all investments against a minimum return benchmark, often called a “hurdle rate.” When it comes to See CARBON on Page 21

NEWSPAPER l VOL. 45, NO. 4 l COPYRIGHT 2022 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. l ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

P001_CCB_20220124.indd 1

HEALTH CARE

REAL ESTATE

Pop-up COVID testing sites draw scrutiny from regulators.

PAGE 16

This distinctive home was built around a round dairy barn.

PAGE 4

1/21/22 3:39 PM

2 January 24, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Illinois GOP is slowly piecing the puzzle together

A

fter a long stretch in which the once-dominant Illinois Republican Party looked like it was going to effectively lie down and cede much of the 2022 ballot to Democrats, the Rs suddenly are acting a little more chipper. Sorta like a 60-year-old guy who suddenly discovers the benefits of, um, vitamin B. In Springfield, the party, led by House GOP Leader Jim Durkin, has coalesced around an issue with real salience: crime, and whether ruling Cook County Democrats are making you unsafe. In Washington, President Joe Biden continues to be the gift that keeps on giving.

Statewide, the Republicans have assembled a diverse ticket of candidates for governor and other constitutional offices with a fighting chance to win, particularly for the vacant secretary of state’s job.

So, congrats! Even better, the party looks like it’s found a big daddy to pay the bills. That’s Chicago hedge fund mogul Ken Griffin, the finan-

I

cial successor to former Gov. Bruce Rauner, who with a couple of buddies personally bankrolled the party before the Democratic version, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, arrived on the scene.

So much for the good news. Now, here are the challenges.

For one, as good as that statewide ticket and gubernatorial hopeful, Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, may prove to be, the ticket lacks something. That’s a nominee anyone has heard of at its top for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Tammy Duckworth.

Of the people who have announced for the GOP nomination, one sued another for defamation, with a third reportedly predicting that the final vote count would show Donald Trump was re-elected. U.S. Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Rodney Davis have taken a pass on running.

So has anyone else who wouldn’t have to spend $5 million just to build their name recognition.

There’s still a very few weeks for that to change, and a few rumors

that something may be afoot. But with Iraq War hero Duckworth sitting on a $6.4 million campaign war chest, don’t hold your breath that you’ll see someone with a decent chance to unseat her.

Task two is rebuilding the party in the largest county in the state. That would be Cook County. It’s home to hundreds of thousands of loyal Republican voters but is a place in which the GOP now holds exactly two countywide posts and is about to lose one of them to retirement, Commissioner Pete Silvestri.

County GOP Chair Sean Morrison, who also serves on the Cook County Board, is hopeful of retaining Silvestri’s seat and perhaps picking up a third seat the Democrats snagged away a few years ago. He notes that, as recently as 2020, the GOP’s nominee for state’s attorney attracted a nifty 871,000 votes. True enough. But that nominee, Pat O’Brien, still lost to Democrat Kim Foxx by 330,000 votes.

The biggest task in getting the

GREG HINZ ON POLITICS

­ arty back to fighting form is whethp er the crew that assembled the Irvin et al. ticket—almost all of them veterans of the Rauner administration—can get Irvin through the Republican primary, given his past praise of how Pritzker has dealt with the COVID pandemic and other slights to the GOP faithful.

“The front-runner is still Bailey, hands down,” says Jeanne Ives, the conservative ex-state rep who almost knocked out Rauner in his re-election primary, referring to gubernatorial hopeful Darren Bailey, a state senator.

“What is the big issue that motivates core Republican voters right now? It’s 23 months of COVID lockdowns and mandates, of topdown tyranny (from Pritzker),” Ives

continues. And on that issue, Bailey is much closer to the base than Irvin, she says.

Interestingly, ex-Gov. Jim Edgar raised the same concerns about Irvin surviving a primary in an interview with Capitol Fax. And winning a general election would be an uphill battle, Edgar suggested.

It’s too soon to tell for sure. We won’t know until Irvin’s handlers let him loose to actually meet voters and answer reporters’ questions. Having won the mayor’s job and then re-election in Aurora tells me Irvin should not be underestimated.

Neither should the difficulty of rebuilding the Illinois Republican Party. Call this most definitely a work in progress.

Holding candidates accountable is tougher than ever

f you’re running for public office these days and you do not announce it with a tweeted campaign video, you’re apparently out of touch and out of date.

As the list of major candidates running for office grows, it’s hard to find one who announced by actually holding a press conference. And while more and more of us are focused on the state of our federal democracy, this lack of live interaction is a trend at the state and local government level that we should worry about, too.

It’s bad enough that news media continue to struggle, particularly print media, and that the state Capitol press room is a shadow of its former self. Add to that the fact that candidates and elected officials are piling on, launching their campaigns by sidestepping media interaction with slick social media videos. These days, officials and candidates seem to face the media members who are left even less frequently than I can recall.

The most recent example is Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, who jumped into the governor’s race via social media video last week and then, on his announcement day, went so far as to duck reporters at a Martin Luther King Jr. event in his hometown, ABC7 Chicago reported.

“Today is about MLK,” Irvin said, ignoring questions about his campaign. “There will be a lot (more) information coming out later.”

Irvin is hardly alone in using social media to announce his candidacy. His announcement was met with a round of carefully prepped, emailed reactions from his primary opponents’ spokespeople.

Of course, we need to take every precaution to keep people safe from the ravages of this relentless

pandemic we’re battling. Yet, that doesn’t excuse candidates and public officials from using COVID as cover to duck out on reporters or to not be held accountable for the promises they make in pre-scripted videos, ads and tweets. More and more, we are seeing official state business conducted behind the scenes or via livestream, and we all lose something when this happens.

Fewer reporters interacting in person, on the fly, with public officials and candidates who make themselves available far less frequently for any questions does not make for better, more open and accountable government and democracy.

Unscripted give-and-take with reporters gives us insight into the candidates and officials. It helps us evaluate their ability to think critically and quickly, to discern how deep their knowledge goes on a range of topics and challenges, to see how they react under fire, to learn how well they’ve prepared, what matters most to them, and to see how they treat people in adversarial roles and situations. It allows us to see whether and how well they can explain their motivations and give us a window into what drives them. You can’t get any of that from a scripted video or a spokesperson’s statement. For a strong candidate or elected official, these in-person interactions could be a defining moment that sets them apart from their challengers.

Plenty of Chicago journalists have complained recently that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot makes herself available to friendly national media members who are less grounded in the nitty-gritty city challenges.

So, let’s also give credit and

praise where it is due. House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch did make himself available, widely, to take any and all questions from the media to mark the anniversary of his first year at the height of House legislative power.

An exchange over video conference with WCIA’s Mark Maxwell shows Welch defending and deflecting his party and chamber’s approach to redistricting, whether and how well he knows what the top concerns of voters are, and, ironically, his defense and explanation for continuing remote legislating.

That remote legislating is not ideal for the public, either. It can

MADELEINE DOUBEK ON GOVERNMENT

and has been done, but it also is far easier for lawmakers to pay lip service to constituents, to distract themselves, as we all do from time to time, during video conferences and to interact less and less fully, not just with the media, but with policy advocates and constituents.

For democracy to work well, we need checks and balances, insight and accountability. We

need to strive to get back to more candidates and officials answering questions and questionnaires, subjecting themselves to give and take, listening and interacting with media and constituents alike.

Madeleine Doubek is executive director of Change Illinois, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for ethical and efficient government.

B E ST I N C L A S S IN OVERALL CLIENT S AT I S FAC T I O N .

BE YOUR BANKER’S TOP PRIORITY. W I N T R U ST.C O M / P R I O R I T Y

CORRECTION The title of Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett was misstated in the Dec. 13 “Power 25” feature.

P002_CCB_20220124.indd 2

Banking products provided by Wintrust Financial Corp. banks. Source: 2021 Coalition Greenwich Market Tracking Program.

1/21/22 3:19 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • January 24, 2022 3

JOE CAHILL ON BUSINESS

Stop the Loop’s slump before it becomes a slide

JOHN R. BOEHM

D

Congo Square Theatre’s Charlique Rolle, right, and Ericka Ratcliff

How do you make art during a pandemic? Carefully.

Chicago’s theaters, concert halls and other venues navigate mask-wearing for performers and patrons, testing for COVID and sometimes canceling shows amid the omicron surge BY STEVE JOHNSON

T

hey’re using phrases like “battle-tough,” “battle-weary” and the dreaded but apt “pivot.”

Facing yet another bump on the road to COVID-19 recovery, leaders of Chicago performing arts and cultural organizations this month have been navigating how best to keep audiences and artists safe without losing the momentum they established during a relatively encouraging autumn.

“We’ve been dancing for almost two years now,” says Roche Schulfer, executive director and CEO of the Goodman Theatre. “And I don’t want to say that we’re used to it. But we’re not surprised by having to do it.”

See CANCELLATIONS on Page 21

“WE ARE TAKING IT ONE SHOW AT A TIME TO ENSURE THE INTEGRITY OF THE ART AND THE SERVICE TO THE AUDIENCE ARE MAINTAINED.” Brooke Flanagan, executive director at Steppenwolf Theatre

As COVID ignites a housing boom, new agents flock to the business Drawn by the dynamism and independent nature of the sector during an o­ therwise gloomy economic time, thousands of people turn to selling real estate

BY DENNIS RODKIN Keki Cannon was working as a home stager for real estate agents and an interior designer when the pandemic arrived, “and you couldn’t go into anyone’s house anymore,” she said. After her husband’s job in finance was cut, and after she finished the spring 2020 semester of home-schooling her three kids, she took a real estate licensing class.

Cannon joined the Winnetka office of @properties in January

P003_CCB_20220124.indd 3

2021, and a year later, she had nearly $4 million in sales volume and was nominated for the firm’s Rookie of the Year.

Cannon is among thousands of people who’ve turned to selling real estate in the housing boom that the pandemic ignited. Agents who entered the business say they were attracted to real estate for its vitality during a period of economic instability, for the beyour-own-boss, write-your-ownticket nature of the business, and, as new agent Oscar Toldeo said,

because “it’s fun.”

Membership in the ­ National Association of Realtors rose to more than 150 million for the first time in 2021, the group’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun, reported at Chicago and suburban market forecasting events in ­mid-January. Yun labeled his slide on the subject, “Worker Shortage Everywhere except NAR.” All three major membership groups for Chicago-area real See NEW AGENTS on Page 22

owntown Chicago got a badly needed boost this week, when Allstate acquired a Wacker Drive building that could become the insurer’s new headquarters and plans for a major renovation of the Merchandise Mart came to light.

The Loop and environs have been hit with a one-two punch recently, as COVID-19 mitigation measures kept office workers at home and the Fulton Market District became the destination of choice for corporations seeking cutting-edge cachet. Downtown office occupancy last month was 38%, and foot traffic was 65% of pre-pandemic levels, according to the Chicago Loop Alliance.

Office vacancy rates, meanwhile, climbed to record highs last year.

There was a time when companies looking for office space in Chicago naturally gravitated to the city’s historic downtown.

Competition came mostly from suburban office parks that fell out of favor around the turn of the century. The Loop boomed as corporate headquarters returned to the city.

Now there’s competition closer to home. Fulton Market has emerged as a full-fledged business hub over the past decade.

Once a haven for scrappy startups looking for cheap rents, the Near West Side neighborhood now attracts Fortune 500 companies paying up for proximity to tech talent and a quotient of cool.

The list includes Google, McDonald’s, Deere and Kimberly-Clark.

Another rival to the central Loop straddles the Eisenhower Expressway, where the conversion of Chicago’s massive Old Post Office into high-end office space has been a smashing success. Developer 601W has filled 95% of the 2.5 million-squarefoot structure with gilt-edged tenants, such as Cisco Systems, Walgreens and Uber.

All of this is good news for Chicago, confirming the city’s enduring appeal as a business location. Despite well-known negatives, such as rising crime and fiscal disarray, Chicago remains one of the few American cities offering the access to talent, transportation and worldclass cultural and educational institutions that companies need to compete in the global economy.

Yet Chicago’s traditional downtown, stretching from the Chicago River east to Michigan Avenue, is key to its allure. That’s where you’ll find the soaring towers that make Chicago an architectural marvel, astonish firsttime visitors and embody the city’s vitality. Lining those streets are the landmarks that define

Chicago in the popular imagination: the Wrigley Building, the Board of Trade tower, Chase Plaza, Willis Tower. Downtown also has the lakefront, a breathtaking vista few cities can match.

These are the images that come to mind when people think of Chicago. What doesn’t come to mind are deserted streets and half-empty office buildings. But that’s increasingly the reality of today’s downtown.

It’s time to stop the slump before it becomes a slide. Chicago can’t thrive without a healthy, growing downtown. To reinvigorate the area, Loop landlords need to figure out how to compete more effectively with places like Fulton Market.

Fortunately, those competitors also offer a model. The lesson of Fulton Market and the Old Post Office is that neighborhoods and buildings can be reinvented to meet the changing preferences of the marketplace.

In a relatively short time, the Near West Side morphed from a fading industrial zone into a bustling mashup of hip restaurants, tech startups and corporate headquarters. The Old Post Office languished as a vacant hulk for decades before finding new life in the past few years.

Downtown doesn’t need to change nearly as much to recapture its mojo. Already known as a world-class business destination, the Loop has an opportunity to evolve with the needs of office tenants.

The rise of work-from-home arrangements during COVID-19 likely means offices will play a different role in the future. To a large degree, they’ll become places where workers confer with colleagues, rather than places to get work done.

Companies will look for office layouts that foster collaboration. They’ll also want top-level communications capabilities and more amenities to lure workers to the office.

Of course, reinvention requires investment. As my colleague Danny Ecker reports, Mart owner Vornado Realty Trust is pumping about $60 million into a rehab project.

Allstate, likewise, just made a big bet on downtown.

In another hopeful sign, online ticket broker Vivid Seats this month leased space at the Marshall Field building on State Street, where Brookfield Properties converted upper floors to offices, with a gym, roof deck and other perks. Vivid Seats is moving from Canal Street in the West Loop.

It seems there’s life in the old Loop yet.

1/21/22 3:20 PM

4 January 24, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

2021 breaks record for luxury home sales

BY DENNIS RODKIN A record 3,480 homes sold for $1 million or more in the city and surrounding seven counties in 2021, according to data provided exclusively to Crain’s by Midwest Real Estate Data. That’s an increase of 19% from the year prior, when there were 2,922 sales.

In May, Sherry Molitor listed a Northfield house with a pool at $1.125 million. Four days later, it was under contract to a buyer, and in August, the deal closed at $1.195 million, or about 6% over the asking price.

“That was exciting,” Molitor, a Coldwell Banker agent, says, describing not only this single transaction, but also the overall experience of the Chicago area’s million-dollar home market in 2021. A million dollars has long been the benchmark for luxury homes; it’s about the upper 2.5% of all home sales in the metro area.

It appears to be a larger increase than the growth in home sales at all prices. Crain’s estimate is that sales were up 13% in 2021, but that figure is not final. Illinois Realtors had not released its final full-year tally at the time of this writing.

The increase in $1 million-andup home sales—the biggest since 2013, when the recovery from the mid-2000s housing crash was in

full bloom—comes in part because of fast-rising prices. The double-digit price increases the pandemic housing boom delivered mean that many more homes were valued at $1 million or more by the marketplace.

‘THINGS HAVE BEEN GOOD’

Beyond that, agents tell Crain’s, the big increase was fueled by low interest rates, high demand for amenities, and buyers’ willingness to bid up to get what they wanted.

For people who kept their jobs throughout the pandemic, “things have been good,” said Mary Summerville, an agent with Dream Town Realty. “They may have gotten promotions and bonuses, they’re sitting on money they didn’t spend on travel,” and interest rates make buying cheap.

The result, Summerville said, is that “every agent has a pocket full of people who want that next house.” In April, she was about to list a client’s three-flat, which includes an owner’s unit, when word got out to somebody who knew somebody and she got an offer. The sale of the yellow-brick building on Magnolia Avenue in Lakewood Balmoral closed in June at $1.2 million—$15,000 over the asking price she had planned.

At times, the luxury home mar­ ommy ket “felt like a frenzy,” said T

Choi, an agent with Keller Williams OneChicago. That was particularly true inside the city limits, where “everyone who was committed to staying in the city wanted that ­single-family home, and demand started to outpace supply. The most competitive product on the market was the single-family home that didn’t need rehab” before the buyers could move in.

Choi represented a pair of buyers who started their search close to the Loop, in Lincoln Park, but eventually “had to expand how far north they could go,” he said.

They ended up buying a newly rehabbed, four-bedroom house on Hutchinson Street in North Center, paying a little below $1.03 million.

In a market where properties sell fast, either in pre-listing agent networks or within a few days of hitting the listings, buyers often get annoyed. Bari Levine, an @ properties agent, spotted an opportunity for her clients in an Andersonville greystone that was stale on the market.

“Stale” in this swift market meant it was still available two months after it was listed in ­early May. Levine is matter-of-fact about why it hadn’t sold: “It was overpriced,” she said.

The previous owners, who’d converted a classic, Chicago grey-

BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOMESERVICES CHICAGO

In the $1 million-and-up category—representing about 2.5% of all homes sold in the area—3,480 homes were sold, an increase of 19% from 2020

MILLION DOLLAR MARKET BOOM Chicago-area sales of homes at $1 million and up surged in 2021, for the second year.

Year

Number of sales

2015

Change

2,353

8.4%

2016 2,423

3.0%

2017

2,658 9.7%

2018

2,694

2019 2,519 2020

2,922

2021

3,480

1.4% -6.5% 16.0% 19.0%

Notes: Figures are for a seven-county metro area, encompassing Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will counties.

Source: Midwest Real Estate Data

stone two-flat into a single-­family home with a modern interior and six bedrooms, were asking $1.7 million. That was more than twice what they had paid for it two years earlier, before the conversion.

Levine said her clients had been

house-hunting for a while in their price range, “and there was nothing else to look at.” Shopping the stale properties above their price range, they found the greystone.

The couple bought it in September for $1.56 million.

A very distinctive home on the North Shore is for sale

BY DENNIS RODKIN If anyone were to ask Karla and Lewis Schwartz’s kids, “Were you raised in a barn?” They’d answer, “Yes.” Since late 2013, the Schwartz family has lived in one of the most distinctive houses on the North Shore, a domed, brick-and-­ timber structure built in the mid1920s as a round dairy barn on a Lake Forest farm.

With their three kids grown, the Schwartzes put the house, on Hathaway Circle, on the market ­ Jan. 18. The home is priced at just under $2 million and represented

by Sally Wood and Valerie Wood of Berkshire Hathaway Home­ Services Chicago.

“Everybody who sees it says, ‘This is the coolest house,’” Karla Schwartz said. “There’s nothing else like it.”

Designed with several other buildings on the street to mimic historical farms in the ­ Normandy region of France, the ­five-bedroom, 6,200-square-foot house has a rare feature under its dome: the former hayloft, now a round room 60 feet in diameter and more than two stories high.

The family plays pickleball and

P004_CCB_20220124.indd 4

basketball there, and has hosted at-home music festivals with over 200 guests, Karla Schwartz said.

“It’s like playing outside without going outside,” Schwartz said.

Hanging from the rafters is a tire swing that predates the ­Schwartzes.

They’ve been told it’s been there since before the barn was converted to a house in the 1950s, she said.

The first floor’s main section is also round and contains the main living spaces. Two arms and a silo connected to the barn contain bedrooms, a garage and other spaces, including a small octagonal office tucked beneath the cap of the silo.

KEEPING THE THEME

The house, with walls 18 inches thick made of brick and stone, is the largest of seven buildings, all now residential, that made up Meadowood Dairy. They were designed by Ralph Varney, the architect of several North Shore mansions at the time, to evoke the farms in Normandy that the dairy’s owner, Clifford M. Leonard, reportedly admired. Leonard, a Chicago construction executive, operated the 150-acre Meadowood Dairy at a time when gentlemen’s farms owned by wealthy families occupied much of w ­ estern Lake

Forest. They included the meatpacking Armour family’s Elawa Farm, advertising pioneer Albert Lasker’s Mill Road Farm and several others.

No main house was ever built at Meadowood Dairy, and Leonard’s working dairy operation lasted less than a decade, according to several historical articles. The seven buildings stood vacant for a while, but were sold off as individual residences in the 1940s and 1950s. In December 2013, the Schwartzes—he’s a surgeon and she’s a Pilates instructor—bought the former dairy barn for $1.275 million, according to Lake County records.

The couple renovated the house, including updating the climate systems, kitchen and flooring, and moving the laundry room from a separate room entered only from the outdoors to a more convenient location indoors.

The rehab did not include insulating the hayloft, because doing so would require concealing the wood structure, which given its construction period is likely oldgrowth timber. “People look up at that gorgeous structure and tell me, ‘Don’t change that,’ ” Schwartz said.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOMESERVICES CHICAGO

The domed, brick-and-timber structure built in the mid-1920s as a round dairy barn on a Lake Forest farm is on the market for just under $2 million

The family kept with the theme of an old French farm by planting apple, pear and fig trees and raising honeybees on the property, which is about eight-tenths of an acre.

The house was the ­Schwartzes’ second renovation project in Lake Forest. Karla Schwartz said they are selling because they are starting on a third.

1/21/22 3:17 PM

Investing in greener companies with Merrill.

Saving for an epic ski trip.

Redeeming rewards for tix to next game.

Finding out his streaming service charge just went up.

Considering a fourth hot dog.

Digital tools so impressive, you just can’t stop banking.

Ever wonder what everyone’s doing on their phones? They’re banking with Bank of America and investing with Merrill. We’ve been investing in digital capabilities and technology for over a decade to provide more personalized experiences and convenience for our clients.

Using our unified mobile app, clients can view and manage their Bank of America banking and Merrill investing all in one place, no matter where they are. This includes personalized insights and guidance from Erica,® planning and tracking financial goals through Life Plan,® and exploring investment ideas and resources with Merrill.

While more and more clients are using our digital banking capabilities, we also know that many still want to visit our financial centers for in-person conversations about their unique financial needs. Our team here in Chicago is ready to help.

Rita Sola Cook President, Bank of America Chicago

What would you like the power to do?®

Learn more at bankofamerica.com/chicago Investing in green technology involves risk. Investors should carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses before investing.

Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated (also referred to as “MLPF&S” or “Merrill”) makes available certain investment products sponsored, managed, distributed or provided by companies that are affiliates of Bank of America Corporation (“BofA Corp.”). MLPF&S is a registered broker-dealer, registered investment adviser, Member SIPC and wholly owned subsidiary of BofA Corp.

Banking products are provided by Bank of America, N.A. and affiliated banks, Members FDIC and wholly owned subsidiaries of Bank of America Corporation.

Investment products:

Are Not FDIC Insured

Are Not Bank Guaranteed

May Lose Value

Screen images simulated. Mobile Banking requires that you download the Mobile Banking app and is only available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. “WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THE POWER TO DO?”, Bank of America Life Plan, Erica, Bank of America and the Bank of America logo are registered trademarks of Bank of America Corporation.

Credit card programs are issued and administered by Bank of America, N.A. Visa is a registered trademark of Visa International Service Association and is used by the issuer pursuant to license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. © 2022 Bank of America Corporation

tab doc.indd 1

22cb0026.pdf

RunDate 1/24/22

FULL PAGE

Color: 4/C

1/18/22 8:55 AM

6 January 24, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Levy launches new innovation studio

Chicago-based DBK Studio will test new hospitality technologies—think automatic drink pourers and drones—in the venues and stadiums where Levy operates food and beverage offerings BY ALLY MAROTTI

L

dering and contactless checkout at some of its venues, where ­patrons can grab what they want and walk out without waiting in line, like at Amazon Go. “There’s so much there that’s exciting and ripe for innovation, and more importantly, ripe for scale,” Satish said.

That ability to scale makes Levy a fitting environment for ­piloting new technology, Lansing said. The company got its start in 1978 with a Chicago deli—D.B. Kaplan’s Delicatessen, the innovation studio’s namesake. Now, it owns standalone restaurants, such as River Roast, and serves food and drinks to attendees at more than 250 venues and events.

As such, DBK Studio has the ability to test a new technology in five NBA arenas at once; or in one arena, one NFL stadium, one baseball SINCE THE ONSET OF THE PANDEMIC, park and at the ­Kentucky ­Derby.

THE FOOD AND BEVERAGE ­INDUSTRY Data gathered during test runs HAS BEEN ADAPTING NEW will inform the ­TECHNOLOGIES AT A BREAKNECK PACE. company on the best way to scale DBK Studio will formalize the the technology, Lansing said.

Innovation studios or hubs are process by which Levy brings the technology to market, Lansing becoming more popular among companies as they hunt for ways said.

DBK Studio managing director to develop new technologies Sandeep Satish was mum on ex- in house, find new clients and actly what new technologies DBK meet startups they can acquire or might roll out next, but hinted at ­invest in.

Initially, DBK Studio does not robotics, drones and a­ utomated beverage pouring. Levy has plan to invest in the startups it already launched mobile or- works with, Lansing said. The ­ evy, the Chicago-based company that runs food and beverage offerings at major stadiums such as Wrigley Field, is launching an innovation studio to pilot new hospitality technologies.

DBK Studio, as it is called, is set to officially launch this week, said Andy Lansing, president and CEO of Levy. It is housed inside Levy’s office in the Gold Coast, and will be focused on finding startups to work with and technology that can be tested at Levy’s venues, then scaled ­nationwide.

“We receive a hundred inbound ideas a month from companies who feel they’ve created the magic elixir,” Lansing said. “At the same time, our folks are out there scouring literally the world to find what we feel is the next great idea.”

A suite at Wrigley Field company also declined to comment on how much it will invest in launching the innovation ­studio.

Since the onset of the pandemic, the food and beverage industry has been adapting new technologies at a breakneck pace, largely for mobile ordering. Consumers have grown more accustomed not just to ordering online or scanning QR codes at the table, but also to

working technology into their overall ­dining ­experience.

At the same time, the industry has increased its dependence on the consumer data it gathers, aiming to speed up drive-thru times or drive repeat visits from customers. The latter effort has proved to be a particular challenge during the pandemic doldrums, when some rarely leave their homes.

Experts have noted that tech-

nology adaptation can be cost prohibitive for the pandemic-­ scarred hospitality industry.

However, it might be worth the cost for some, especially if the tech helps ease pressure from the tight labor market.

DBK Studio will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Levy. Advisers will be Larry Levy, who co-founded Levy, and Betsy Ziegler, CEO of Chicago innovation hub 1871.

Hubbard Street Dance relocates to Water Tower Place

BY STEVE JOHNSON If people don’t want to shop so much in brick-and-mortar stores anymore, maybe they want to . . . dance?

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is the newest tenant at the struggling Water Tower Place vertical shopping mall, hard by Johnston & Murphy and Claire’s shops, filling 13,000 square feet with its primary rehearsal and teaching space, plus an office and artists lounge.

Taking up residency in the fourth-floor area formerly occupied by Adidas, which moved to the third floor, the ­long-standing dance company becomes the second cultural tenant in the Michigan Avenue mall—if you count the Chicago Sports Museum memorabilia hall, a fixture on the seventh floor since 2014.

“Hubbard Street has always pushed the limits of dance in ­general,” said David McDermott,

executive director of the dance company. “And I think that this is a really unique opportunity to kind of see how art and commerce can work together. Water Tower Place has been an amazing partner in helping us explore ways that we can benefit art and the mall.”

People passing the space will be able to get a “partial view” of rehearsals and classes in progress, the company said. And, yes, there will be merch on sale, said McDermott.

With support for the move from the Pritzker Foundation, Hubbard Street has already installed the sprung floor necessary for its dancers and is at work rehearsing its next show, “Spring Series: ­ Re/Connect,” slated for the Museum of Contemporary Art March 2-13.

Hubbard Street, which also performs at the Harris Theater, sold its longtime home at 1147 W. Jackson Blvd., said McDermott. This season is its 44th.

MICHELLE REID

The newest tenant at the shopping mall moves into retail space formerly occupied by an Adidas store

Hubbard Street dancers Michele Dooley and Michael Garcia in the studio at Water Tower Place.

The mall is in the midst of a revitalization plan under owners Brookfield Property Partners, aiming to inject new life into a storied space whose fortunes have sagged.

Last year, primary retail tenant

Macy’s left the mall and Target abandoned negotiations to move in amid a general decline for shopping malls nationwide.

A mall representative declined to comment for this story. In a statement provided by the dance

troupe, mall Senior General Manager Mitch Feldman said, “Water Tower Place is home to more than just retail and dining options. . . .Hubbard Street Dance is an excellent addition to our community.”

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • January 24, 2022 7

After the euphoria, a comedown for Rivian auto­maker with $1 trillion mar- vehicles a year at its current fac- faces a long road ahead but aptory in downstate Normal will be pears to be ready. ket value in October.

The Amazon order with Stel“I think Rivian will still be OK in bolstered by the Georgia plant in When Rivian launched its lantis doesn’t necessarily threatmuch-delayed R1T electric pick- the long run, but these are great the near future.

“After a 12-year journey of get- en the EV startup since Amazon CEO R.J. Scaringe said Rivian’s priority will be up last fall, the reviews were examples of how quickly a new automaker’s fortunes can swing, ting our strategy and offerings will need multiple partners to deliveries of R1T models with the more popular breathless.

“The coolest pickup ever or at least appear to swing,” said ready for customer deliveries, it achieve its zero-emissions goals, standard-range batteries. made,” said auto enthusiast Karl Brauer, executive analyst at has been incredibly rewarding Brinley said. And strong consumto see the excitement and enthu- er interest in the Rivian brand pared to weather those bumps,” and popular YouTube present- iSeeCars.com.

Rivian said in a letter to share- siasm for what we are building,” seems unaffected by recent com- she said. “Cracking the car induser Doug DeMuro. “The most try to become a volume producer remarkable pickup truck we’ve holders Dec. 16 that it had 71,000 said the shareholder letter, which pany news.

“As Rivian scales and ramps will take time.” ever driven,” declared Motor- customer orders for the R1T and accompanied the third-quarter up production, it may continue Trend before naming it Truck of R1S, in addition to the Amazon earnings report.

Stephanie Brinley, principal to see some bumps in the road, Laurence Iliff writes for Crain’s order for its EDV vans. Rivian said the Year.

More recently, the Amazon-­ its planned capacity of 200,000 analyst at IHS Markit, said Rivian but the company does seem pre- sister publication Automotive News. backed startup has been on something of a roller-coaster ride, with last year’s euphoria fading into fresh concerns over production targets and the departure of a top executive.

The company saw its market value soar after its November initial public offering, besting General Motors and Ford Motor Co., a key Rivian investor. In mid-­ December, Rivian announced a second factory, near Atlanta, that will increase the company’s production capacity by 400,000 vehicles per year.

“The plant, which will eventually employ more than 7,500 workers, represents a key next step as Rivian scales aggressively toward higher-capacity production for our future generation of products,” the company said.

But the tide quickly turned on fresh struggles that underscore the long road ahead for the novice builder of consumer EVs and commercial delivery vans.

In late December, Rivian said it will delay deliveries of the R1T and the R1S SUV with extended-range batteries until 2023.

The delay allows the company to prioritize the more popular standard-range vehicles, CEO RJ Scaringe said in a letter to customers posted on Reddit.

“The next several months will remain a steep climb as we continue to ramp up our operations,” Scaringe said.

Early in the new year, Stellantis announced that Amazon will be its first customer for the new Ram ProMaster battery-electric van, beginning in 2023. That poses competition to Rivian, which counts Amazon as its biggest customer with an initial order of 100,000 delivery vans by 2025.

This month, Rivian disclosed 2021 production of 1,015 vehicles—short of its 1,200 goal.

It also confirmed the departure of COO Rod Copes. Rivian told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news, developed by: designed by: that Copes’ departure had been planned.

The Standard at Columbia In the aftermath of the recent Columbia, South Carolina setbacks, Rivian’s stock last week was trading well below its IPO price of $78 after soaring as high We see our work through the eyes of the people who will use them every day. Through their as $172 in mid-November.

While the recent events have eyes, we see places of innovation, industry, technology, healing, research and entertainment. been a comedown from the post-IPO excitement, it certainThe result? Powerful structures with impacts that reach far beyond these walls. ly wasn’t unexpected, given the volatility of EV startups. Tesla claycorp.com was near bankruptcy a few years ago but then became the first

BY LAURENCE ILIFF

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS

Personnel and production worries suggest a long slog ahead for the Amazon-backed EV pickup startup

...

P007_CCB_20220124.indd 7

1/21/22 3:15 PM

8 January 24, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

She may be 1st Muslim woman on federal bench Chicagoan Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, legal director for the ACLU of Illinois, was nominated by President Biden

BY STEVEN R. STRAHLER A top officer of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois would become the first Muslim woman on the federal bench, if the U.S. Senate confirms Nusrat ­Jahan Choudhury’s nomination.

Choudhury, 45, is legal director for the ACLU of Illinois and has worked for the civil liberties advo­ cate for more than a decade. She’s counseled community organiza­ tions seeking enforcement of the federal consent decree reached with the Chicago Police Depart­ ment and has sued to protect im­ migrants held in detention.

The ACLU chapter in a state­ ment commended her Jan. 19 nomination by President Joe

Biden for a seat in the Eastern District of New York, while add­ ing, “As a matter of organizational policy, the ACLU does not support or oppose nominees to political or judicial office and will not be lob­ bying the senate on this or other judicial nominations.”

Choudhury was not available to comment. She grew up in North­ brook, the only daughter and middle child of immigrants from what is now known as Bangla­ desh. Her late father, Nurer, was chief of neurology at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital, and her moth­ er, Nafisa, worked for Sodexo, a food-services company.

“Our house was the hub,” she told Crain’s in 2020. “We used to call it the Holiday Inn—people

would show up at our front door with a note saying, ‘My cousin told me to find Dr. Choudhury and Mrs. Choudhury on Prince Street in Northbrook.’ That’s the legacy that my parents gave to me and my brothers.”

an amicus brief to file at the U.S. Supreme Court fighting the city’s car impoundment practices.

Choudhury would be the sec­ ond Muslim American on the fed­ eral bench. In June, Zahid Quraishi was confirmed to the U.S. District Court for New Jersey, where he had been a magistrate judge.

The two nominations, among 83 to the federal bench so far by Biden, reflect his interest in diver­ sifying judicial ranks. USA Today reported that 62 of the nominees have been women.

Choudhury’s 2016 marriage to visual-effects producer Michael Early was chronicled by the New York Times.

To relax, she cooks, telling Crain’s in 2020 about her special­

LEGAL CAREER

She graduated from Yale Law School, clerked for a federal appel­ late judge and joined a New York nonprofit helping women emerg­ ing from prison. She later served as an ACLU staff attorney and be­ came deputy director of the orga­ nization’s Racial Justice Program, leading litigation to end debtors prisons in the South. When she returned to Chicago in 2020, she already was involved in preparing

Nusrat Jahan Choudhury ty: “Morog Pulao. It is a very fancy chicken pulao, which is a recipe of the Mughals who ruled South Asia for many years. Their cuisine is intricate and delicate and mul­ tilayered.”

The least-trusted sources: Government officials, journalists

Cooper’s Hawk to reopen in city with new chef-in-residence series

BY ALLY MAROTTI Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants is reopening its lone Chicago location for dine-in this spring for the first time since the pandemic shut it down almost two years ago.

Now, it’s aiming to be a destina­ tion for the brand’s many wine club members, in part by launching a chef-in-residence series, where well-known chefs concoct a menu each quarter.

The first is Brooklyn-based Tom Colicchio, who co-founded Gramercy Tavern and was exec­ ­ utive chef there. He also is a “Top Chef” judge. Next up will be Carla Hall of “The Chew” and “Top Chef.”

Esquire by Cooper’s Hawk, as the location will be called, will be open seven days a week for lunch and dinner, with brunch in the works.

Wine club members have long been tantalized to dine in Cooper’s Hawk restaurants with discounts on carryout orders and other din­ ing rewards. Esquire by Cooper’s Hawk takes it a step farther, said founder and CEO Tim McEnery.

The restaurant will offer more than 3,000 bottles, and tastings of rare and luxury wines that “are above and beyond the Cooper’s

P008_CCB_20220124.indd 8

Hawk wines,” he said. “(It) will be a very aspirational experience,” McEnery said. “We have members in Florida that will fly to Chicago” and from other states to Esquire.

Patrons need not be wine club members to dine at Esquire, McEn­ ery said. The company also hopes to rope in new patrons, especially city diners who might not be as fa­ miliar with the brand.

COVID CLOSURE

The Gold Coast spot was open just two months before COVID struck. It took up residence in the former Esquire Theater space, replacing Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House and its Es­ quire Champagne Room bar with a three-story wine tower, open kitchen and Cooper’s Hawk sig­ nature retail store selling truffles, wine and other gifts.

The Downers Grove-based company launched in 2005 and quickly became a haven for sub­ urbanites with its approachable wine and food. It has since grown its wine program to 540,000 mem­ bers, and operates 49 restaurants in 11 states with plans to open eight more locations this year. The Esquire location was its first big

leap into an urban setting, and will soon become its first major foray into foodie-friendly offerings.

Esquire by Cooper’s Hawk is set to reopen March 21.

The company is planning oth­ er “by Cooper’s Hawk” openings, with similar plays to become des­ tinations for wine club members.

Next up is Piccolo Buco by Coo­ per’s Hawk, set to open in Oak Brook in late April.

Piccolo Buco is a pizza place in Rome near the Trevvi Fountain that McEnery visited with his fian­ cee on a pre-pandemic trip to Ita­ ly. Cooper’s Hawk is working with owner Luca Issa to serve his pizza at the upcoming Oak Brook spot.

Bloomberg reported this month that Cooper’s Hawk is planning an initial public offering this year, citing people familiar with the matter. The company is targeting a valuation of more than $1 billion in the listing. If it completes plans to go public, it would join a slew of restaurants to do so in recent months after a yearslong dry spell for eating establishments on public exchanges. Chicago-based Porti­ llo’s went public last fall.

McEnery declined to share rev­ enue figures, nor would he com­ ment on potential IPO plans.

BY KATHERINE DAVIS Government officials and journalists are some of the least-trusted sources across the globe, while people instead put more faith in businesses as in­ stitutions they trust, according to a new survey from Chicago public relations firm Edelman.

The 22nd annual Trust Ba­ rometer survey, which includes more than 36,000 respondents across 28 countries, shows that government institutions were the most trusted source as re­ cently as May 2020. But since then, trust in government has fallen 18 points to 52%.

Despite that drop, most re­ spondents say they still expect government to lead on ma­ jor societal issues, including COVID-19 vaccination (74%), climate change (65%), system­ ic injustice and discrimination (61%) and workforce reskilling (53%).

Business institutions are the most trusted group, at 61%, among non-government orga­ nizations (59%), government (52%) and media (50%).

While trust in business is strong, CEOs specifically are among the least trustworthy leaders next to government leaders and journalists. Re­ spondents say they most trust scientists, plus their own co­ workers and CEOs. Other key findings include: Nearly 60% of respondents re­ port that it is their tendency to distrust until seeing evidence that something, or someone, is

GETTY IMAGES

BARRY BRECHEISEN

A survey from Chicago communications firm Edelman shows people trust scientists and their own co-workers

trustworthy.

Nearly 1 out of every 2 respon­

dents view government (48%) and media (46%) as divisive forces in society.

Half of respondents (44%) be­ lieve government is effectively taking a leadership role.

About 76% of respondents say they worry about false informa­ tion and “fake news,” which is up four points from last year’s survey.

Nearly 70% of people believe they are intentionally being misled or given false informa­ tion by journalists. (The survey did not distinguish between print and broadcast media, nor did it allow respondents to identify particular media.)

About 66% believe government leaders are misleading them and 63% believe business lead­ ers are misleading or providing false information.

Respondents are critical of capitalism, with 52% saying that, in its current form, capital­ ism does more harm than good.

1/21/22 3:14 PM

tab doc.indd 1

22cb0024.pdf

RunDate 1/24/22

FULL PAGE

Color: 4/C

1/18/22 4:14 PM

10 January 24, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

EDITORIAL

D

Time to start thinking about reopening

ALAMY

A

lunchtime stroll through the Loop since omicron blew in can be a rather lonesome affair. Even at the height of midday, it’s possible to jaywalk across Michigan Avenue without fear of being flattened— not that we’re recommending lawbreaking, mind you. Restaurants are near empty around noon. If a tumbleweed were to roll down Wacker Drive at rush hour, it would fit right in to the tableau.

Following 22 months of quarantining, mask-wearing, social distancing, grief, loss and worry, the holiday-season spike in COVID cases was like a punch to our collective gut, driving those Chicagoans privileged enough to be able to work from home to do so once again after tentatively venturing out into the sunshine months earlier. Loop office workers, like their counterparts across the country, are once again hunkering down at home.

Now every Chicagoan is praying, meditating or just plain hoping more intensely than ever before for an end to the pandemic, and soon. In the meantime, there’s reason to worry when—or if—the central business district will ever be the same.

So it was something of a relief to hear a note of optimism from a practitioner of the dismal science: an economist. In a conversation with Crain’s A.D. Quig on her Tuesday podcast, “A.D. Q&A,” University of Chicago professor Austan Goolsbee talked about the future of cities, and sounded fairly bullish.

He predicts, for instance, that those who fled to the suburbs or beyond during the COVID era will return. The powerful forces that have driven humans to congregate in urban spaces will exert themselves once again when the pandemic is behind us. Chicago isn’t an exception.

“If you go get the census data—it goes back to 1790 or something—urbanization has increased every 10 years since the time

of the ‘Hamilton’ musical to today. That’s not just in the United States, that’s in all the rich countries,” said Goolsbee, the onetime head of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama. “We’re more productive when we’re around each other. Wages are higher. We get ideas from each other.

That’s why cities are as rich as they are. This was a tremendously unusual two-year period in which people left urban areas for rural areas. I think five years from now when the job market is different than this bizarre moment, at the first sign that the person that’s coming to the office is the one getting promoted or is doing the deals, having higher pay, those that left the office will come back.”

That isn’t to say Chicago has it made. This city’s challenges are well-chronicled here and elsewhere. But it’s good to be reminded that the people we need to fix those myriad problems will likely be around and can be enticed to continue writing the story of this

proud city, even though we are facing hard times. We haven’t faced hard times quite like these in the lifetime of anyone reading this now, but Chicago has indeed bounced back from adversity before, and there are grounds for believing we can do it again.

The first step will come when downtown employers start to call workers back to the office. Yes, for many sectors, some form of flexible work will likely outlast the pandemic. But it will soon become evident that the kind of collaboration and networking that really moves the needle happens in person, and employers interested in growth and innovation will start expecting staffers to come together on a regular basis, even if it’s only a few days a week. That activity will help spark a much-needed revival in the heart of our downtown.

Caution is still warranted, as Dr. Emily Landon, head of infection control at University of Chicago Medicine, reminded us in a

Jan. 20 interview with Crain’s Katherine Davis. “If you bring people back too soon, you could jeopardize your long-term productivity by having outbreaks happen in your workplace,” Landon warns. True enough. Recent data does suggest this month’s COVID surge may have peaked, however, with the number of new hospital admissions for COVID-like illnesses statewide dropping in a manner that mirrors the drop in other regions that experienced an omicron-driven jump in cases earlier than Chicago did.

So business owners, who have been monitoring COVID data as closely as a stock ticker, can and should derive some confidence from the numbers as they map plans to eventually reopen their offices. And as Gerald E. Harmon, president of the American Medical Association, argues in a recent guest op-ed for Crain’s, those plans should include vaccine requirements: “Our only hope is that large employers do what’s right—not only for their own employees and their families, but for the health of our nation.”

In the meantime, more grains of optimism about the eventual fate of our city’s economic core can be found in Crain’s reports that many big companies are placing long-term bets on downtown, COVID or no. Crain’s columnist Joe Cahill notes that Allstate just acquired a Wacker Drive building that could become the insurer’s new headquarters; the owners of the Merchandise Mart are planning a $60 million renovation; Walgreens, Uber and Cisco are putting down roots at the Old Post Office; and Fulton Market has drawn Google, McDonald’s, Deere and Kimberly-Clark.

All of which means these companies see what UChicago’s Goolsbee sees when he looks beyond the pandemic: a downtown Chicago that has an enduring appeal as a business destination. With the virus starting to ebb, it’s time to start carefully planning to occupy that downtown once again.

7) C p am si p N il in

p U sc

Chie

Grou

Edito

Crea

Assis

Assis

Assis Cassa

Depu

Depu and

Digit

Asso

Copy

Copy

Cont

Polit

Senio Steve

Repo Elyss Ally M Steve

Cont

Rese Vice

Sales

YOUR VIEW

T

Direc

Even Chris

Employers should help reduce the COVID toll

safety, it sends a mixed message he decision by the U.S. Suto a pandemic-fatigued public. preme Court on Jan. 13 It is clear that vaccine requireagainst the Biden adminments work.

Requirements istration’s efforts to mandate achieve the goal for which they COVID-19 vaccination and other are designed and implemented: protective measures for or large protect public health and prebusinesses should not prevent serve the common welfare. And these employers from doing what it is important to remember that must be done in the name of pubvaccine requirements have been lic health: requiring vaccines to a part of American life since the protect their workers, our com- Gerald E. ­Harmon, 19th century, with their constimunities and our nation from the M.D., is the tutionality firmly established by ravages of this pandemic. president of the a U.S. Supreme Court decision The fact that the nation’s high- Chicago-based handed down in 1905. est court upheld the vaccine American MediAt this point, it is most unformandate for health care workers cal Association. tunate that politicization of the underscores the urgency and effectiveness of vaccines in reducing the hu- virus and the vaccines developed to protect man toll of the pandemic. While supporting against severe illness and death has bethis requirement for all eligible staff mem- come a seemingly insurmountable obstabers at health care facilities participating cle to defeating the pandemic. The consein the Medicare and Medicaid programs quences of vaccine resistance can be found represents an important victory for patient in the higher number of COVID-19 hospi-

talizations and deaths occurring across our country.

Requiring vaccination as a condition of employment will help lead us out of this nightmare—a requirement the AMA has made in our own return-to-office plan.

For evidence of a vaccine mandate’s effectiveness consider the case of United Airlines, which in August 2021 became one of the nation’s first large employers to require COVD-19 vaccinations for its workforce of about 67,000 employees. In a little more than a month, more than 97% of those employees had received their shots.

Prior to the vaccine mandate, COVID-19 claimed the life of one or more United employees each week on average, according to Scott Kirby, United’s CEO. But just this month, Kirby told his employees that the airline has recorded eight consecutive weeks without a COVID-19-related death among its vaccinated workforce. “United is proving that requiring the vaccine is the right thing

Write us: Crain’s welcomes responses from readers. Letters should be as brief as possible and may be edited. Send letters to Crain’s Chicago Business, 150 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60601, or email us at letters@chicagobusiness.com. Please include your full name, the city from which you’re writing and a phone number for fact-checking purposes.

P010-P011_CCB_20220124.indd 10

Mark

Prod

to do because it saves lives,” Kirby wrote in a memo to all employees this month.

We know that COVID-19 vaccination prevents hospitalizations and saves lives, even if it does not guarantee that a vaccinated individual won’t become infected. When the first doses of the vaccine became available late in 2020, physicians and other health professionals were among the first to receive them—and a vaccination rate greater than 96% among the physician workforce bears witness to their safety and efficacy.

The public relies on clear and consistent communication from leaders and institutions in a crisis. The decision on the OSHA mandate by the Supreme Court will further undermine efforts to achieve greater vaccine acceptance in the workplace, which is crucial to ending this grave public health crisis. Our only hope is that large employers do what’s right—not only for their own employees and their families, but for the health of our nation.

Sound off: Send a column for the Opinion page to editor@ chicagobusiness.com. Please include a phone number for verification purposes, and limit submissions to 425 words or fewer.

1/21/22 3:21 PM

Even

Acco Claud Cour

Peop

Proje

Digit

CRAI

Keith

Mary

KC Cr

Chris

Robe

Veeb

G.D. C Mrs.

For s conc chica (in th (all o

au iknt ge er ke er at n

nkce o rn st de at ly s,

m mat m ’s st d he ns, at as m-

ee he n a ng o

a

en ne e h e n rs

nt uA er cis h rs mh

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • January 24, 2022 11

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Echoes of past crime waves

D

avid Greising’s column “Fighting crime? Maybe our crime-fighters should stop fighting first” (Jan. 7) captures well the violent crime crisis Chicagoans face and does so by correctly portraying the political squabblers as the amateurs they are. On a smaller scale, this situation reminds me of an early 1980s petty crime wave of theft from autos on the Near West Side, wherein crimes were readily detected by broken window glass littering the streets.

Just like today, the police were virtually powerless to put a stop to it. But an alert UIC criminology professor instituted a scheme in which valuables were left prom-

inently on the seat of a decoy car which was monitored by hidden officers. The crime wave was over in three weeks.

This might be worth trying for catching car jackers—assuming the squabblers can be convinced to prosecute suspects—as the crime dynamics of carjacking and theft from autos are remarkably similar.

Now we need an alert UIC economics professor to test the hypothesis that attacking crime by firearm removal actually increases crime by raising the price of firearms, the criminal’s tools.

WILLIAM O’NEILL Chicago

Another question for the mayor Kudos to A.D. Quig in her article comparing and contrasting Lightfoot campaign promises (“Lori Lightfoot, then and now,” Jan. 7). I would like to add to the section on economic development: Ask the mayor’s office and Ald. Garza why they have ignored a potential development of the old U.S. Steel site.

As part of the proposed campus developers are offering a free building for the City Colleges to house their aviation training program. The visionary Juan Salgado, City Colleges chancellor, wants to partner with the developer to offer free training

for the neighborhoods surrounding the former steel plant site. These thousands of jobs would be placed right at the site of the development, with jobs averaging $50,000 to $70,000, compared to the average salary in that neighborhood of $20,000. Construction of the proposed development would employ 1,500 to 3,000 people from the neighborhood, as well.

The mayor’s development team is ignoring a solution to the problem of revitalizing the southeast part of the city. The site has been vacant for almost 30 years. Should the neighborhood continue to suffer economically?

JOSEPH JAMES CALVANICO Chicago

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Chief executive officer KC Crain Group publisher/executive editor Jim Kirk Editor Ann Dwyer Creative director Thomas J. Linden Assistant managing editor/columnist Joe Cahill Assistant managing editor/digital Ann R. Weiler Assistant managing editor/news features Cassandra West Deputy digital editor Todd J. Behme Deputy digital editor/audience and social media Robert Garcia Digital design editor Jason McGregor

CRAIN’S AUDIO STUDIO PRESENTS

Associate creative director Karen Freese Zane Copy chief Scott Williams Copy editor Tanya Meyer Contributing editor Jan Parr Political columnist Greg Hinz Senior reporters Steve Daniels, Alby Gallun, John Pletz Reporters Elyssa Cherney, Katherine Davis, Danny Ecker, Ally Marotti, A.D. Quig, Dennis Rodkin, Steven R. Strahler Contributing photographer John R. Boehm Researcher Sophie H. Rodgers Vice president, product Kevin Skaggs Sales director Sarah Chow Director of research Frank Sennett Events manager/account executive Christine Rozmanich Marketing manager Cody Smith Production manager David Adair Events specialist Kaari Kafer Account executives Claudia Hippel, Bridget Sevcik, Laura Warren, Courtney Rush, Amy Skarnulis

FOUR-STAR STORIES

People on the Move manager Debora Stein Project manager Joanna Metzger Digital designer Christine Balch CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. Keith E. Crain Chairman Mary Kay Crain Vice chairman KC Crain Chief executive officer Chris Crain Senior executive vice president

PART 1: BRONZEVILLE “UNAPOLOGETICALLY AFRICAN-AMERICAN” AVAILABLE NOW ON ALL STREAMING PLATFORMS

Robert Recchia Chief financial officer Veebha Mehta Chief marketing officer G.D. Crain Jr. Founder (1885-1973) Mrs. G.D. Crain Jr. Chairman (1911-1996) For subscription information and delivery concerns please email customerservice@ chicagobusiness.com or call 877-812-1590 (in the U.S. and Canada) or 313-446-0450 (all other locations).

Compelling Chicago stories and podcasts that will deepen your understanding of the city, its people, and the key issues it faces.

cation

P010-P011_CCB_20220124.indd 11

1/21/22 4:26 PM

12 January 24, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

YOUR VIEW

The investment trend Milton Friedman scorned The economist, who claimed a company’s only object is profits, didn’t see the surge in environmental, social and governance investing more people care about ESG than Netflix, hard as that is to believe.

A 2019 survey by Fortune magazine found that 72% of Americans say companies should be “mission driven” as well as focused on shareholders and customers.

Millennials are using their pocketbooks to support ESG, if only they carried pocketbooks or knew what they were. Eighty percent of millennials say they would pay more for products that make social responsibility claims, compared to 48% of baby boomers, those vaunted rebels of an earlier era.

Employees care.

“A strong ESG proposition can help companies attract and retain quality employees, enhance employee motivation by instilling a sense of purpose, and increase productivity overall,” according to a 2019 report in the McKinsey Quarterly, which is as enthusiastic as highly paid management consultants get about anything.

Millennials, who are as diffident as cats and just as hard to herd, are again a key.

Of those born between 1981 and 1996, 40% say they chose a job because the company performed better on sustainability than the alternative, compared to just 17% of baby boomers, according to a recent survey of 1,000 current or former workers of companies with more than 5,000 employees.

That survey was commissioned by a blockchain-based, clean-energy platform.

R

ag th

WIKIPEDIA

S

New York Times article? The Vietay what you will about nam War and, specifically, proMilton Friedman’s notable tests against corporate weapons contributions to econommanufacturers, such as Dow, the ics, his view of the role of company that brought us napalm. corporations doesn’t stand the test In 1967, an Ohio woman wrote of time. a Methodist minister in WashingAnd by “time” I mean less than ton asking about mutual funds a year. Even as the famed libertarthat did not invest in weapons ian proclaimed in 1970 that the makers. In 1971, a year after Friedonly social responsibility of busiman’s article, the minister was ness is to increase profits, the role Thomas A. ­Corfman part of a foursome that launched of the corporation was already is a senior Pax World Funds, the first investchanging. Executives, sharehold- consultant at ers and the public were beginning Ragan Consulting ment vehicle to base decisions on to scrutinize the impact of busi- Group and heads the social and environmental behavior of corporations. ness on international affairs, the the firm’s ESG Vietnam wasn’t the only burnenvironment and social issues. communications ing issue of 1970, which includThose changes culminated in practice. He is a ed fights across the country over environmental, social and gover- former reporter school desegregation, the first nance investing, which has soared and editor for Earth Day and the Women’s in recent years, totaling $16.6 tril- Crain’s Chicago Strike for Equality, the largest lion—that’s trillion with a “t”—in Business. women’s rights demonstration 2020 in the U.S. alone, according since the suffrage movement. to US SIF, a nonprofit that favors ESG. Pax World wasn’t an overnight success, The trend toward socially responsible investing was already well underway when but it opened a fracture in the foundation of the University of Chicago professor died Friedman’s formulation. What followed was in 2006. We can imagine his ghost, seeing a decades-long shift in investment philosohis pronouncement unravel, roaming the phy, bringing us to ESG, the biggest investGothic halls of the university, rattling value-­ ment trend in years.

But a lot of things are important that nochain analyses and slamming shut ecobody cares about. The national debt is imnomic models like so many open doors.

So what was going on when the Nobel portant, but more people care about the Prize winner offered his proclamation in a rising price of Netflix. As it turns out, even

Milton Friedman If that company isn’t run by a millennial, I’ll stop drinking craft beer.

The premise of all this fuss is that ESG and is perhaps our only chance to avoid a global disaster that Black Panther and Superman combined couldn’t prevent.

Whether that’s true or not, ESG ratings are multiplying faster that ratings for hospitals, and who do those really help? Meanwhile, companies are issuing a flood of puffy press releases patting themselves on the back. These releases are quite good for your reputation, if your brand is phoniness.

Healthy skepticism aside, ESG is here to stay and Friedman didn’t see it coming.

Perhaps research would have changed his mind.

He also said in 1999 that the internet would be “one of the major forces for reducing the role of government.”

Mark Zuckerberg probably hasn’t given up on that prediction.

th h

an R fi re in u to fo ch th ta w n Th

ex ci M go b ch M an th

Rethinking what K-12 learning should look like It is both wholly unacceptn Jan. 11, more than able and totally predictable.

330,000 children in But there’s a larger lesson to Chicago lost another be learned from these two sides day of instruction— at loggerheads. So much of this the fifth straight—during a time debate is predicated on the rewhen so many are already in criturn of “normal” instruction, as sis. No situation better illustrates if “normal” had been serving all the need to reimagine our eduof our students well. As we’ve cation system than this standoff seen time and again—through between the Chicago Teachacademic performance meaers Union and Chicago Public Phyllis Lockett is Schools, two groups that have a founder and CEO sures, college admissions and success—our venomous history that has re- of Chicago-based postsecondary sulted in students being held Leap Innovations, “normal” school system left behostage on the sidelines before. which works with hind the majority of students.

Unfortunately, the p ­andemic While the two groups have come schools to spark has made this abundantly to a resolution, it’s not without innovation and clear: In Chicago and commuunnecessary trade-offs for our prepare students nities large and small across the for the future of children.

United States, school districts To be clear, neither side can work. are pulling students from one completely claim the moral high ground here. The union’s notion untenable situation to another because that all schools need to cease in-person they have failed to build resilience into learning, given the varying degrees of their systems.

And speaking of “normal,” teachers for impact COVID-19 is having across the city and the disparities in risk mitiga- far too long have borne sole ­responsibility tions put in place in schools, is unfair to for a student’s learning. The pandemic students. Equally galling, as we approach has underscored a long-unrealistic conthe third year of this pandemic, is CPS’ cept of the teacher’s role—the demand sluggishness to build infrastructure that to differentiate instruction for all of their accommodates the pandemic’s myriad students, while also meeting their social-­ disruptions—as evidenced by the lack emotional and cultural needs. And that’s of both an effective plan for remote in- on top of the physical protections teachstruction and an operational strategy ers now are required to put in place to that makes educators, students and their keep kids, and themselves, safe during a global health crisis. families feel safe.

P012-P013_CCB_20220124.indd 12

As long as “normal” is the objective, these clashes between CPS and the CTU will continue.

That’s why this moment is a clarion call to redesign what learning looks like to make K-12 education sustainable for our children. We’re likely entering a period where COVID-19 or perhaps other health crises are a consistent part of life. Learning can’t stop because of that. In 2022, there’s no reason why virtual learning should be isolating or academically lax. It can—and should be—an additive experience that gives students unique exposure to topics or places they may not otherwise have access to in a classroom bound by geography. We must build a system that sustains education no matter what is happening in the world, rather than continue to operate with fits and starts that paralyze instruction.

There’s an obvious short-term solution to the current educational crisis in Chicago: Getting the kids back in school immediately. But that moment is merely a first

C

u er an an

se ca in th ar ru

ISTOCK

O

We’re likely entering a period where COVID-19 or perhaps other health crises are a consistent part of life.

Learning can’t stop because of that. There’s no reason why virtual learning should be isolating or academically lax.

step in the hard work required to create the education system that our children deserve. We must seize this opportunity to rethink the needs of our students and how we can best prepare them for the changes and challenges that lie ahead. We must create a more sustainable education system that meets 21st-century needs, rather than think of learning opportunities outside of the school walls as an “emergency” option. Our children’s futures hang in the balance.

1/21/22 3:20 PM

re “b tr “f on ve

A le o h b re cr

th b th o te

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • January 24, 2022 13

YOUR VIEW

d

Fulton Market: Too much of a good thing?

WIKIPEDIA

R

ll

d al n

gs snof n or s. re g. is

et c-

n

new users to the area, notably edevelopment of areas in Google’s Midwest headquarthe city that have outlived ters, as well as many young tech their original purpose or entrepreneurs and rising tech have deteriorated due to companies. These companies age or neglect is generally a good had been attracted by the “bohething. mian” character of the budding Until it is too much of a good district, and we concluded that thing. And that, I fear, is what is our first task was to preserve and happening now in Fulton Market. enhance that appeal.

As commissioner of planning We believed that the Market and development during Mayor Andrew J. Mooney Rahm Emanuel’s first term in of­ was commission- area could become something very special if we managed it fice, I and my staff saw that the er of the Departredevelopment of the Market was ment of Planning well. So we decided to use one of the most powerful tools the inevitable. Longtime owners and & Development city has, its ability to landmark users—primarily food distribu- for Mayor Richtors who had been located there ard M. Daley and historic properties. We set about designating all the appropriate for decades—were already pur- Mayor Rahm buildings we could as a first step chasing properties elsewhere for Emanuel from in promoting the district’s overall their companies. The transpor- 2010-2015. redevelopment. tation and utilities infrastructure Other critical steps of course followed, was at least a hundred years old and could not support modern industrial facilities. including the rebuild of the Fulton streetscape. But that only made sense in view of The time had come for change.

But what kind of change? We looked at the historic designation we sought.

At first, this was not a popular step, espeexamples of urban transformation in other cities, particularly New York’s comparable cially among many of the landowners and Meatpacking District, which had under- developers who were eyeing speculative regone a successful revitalization some years turns on properties in the district. But as its before. It became clear to us that the best success shows, particularly with the flood of chance we as the city had to promote the tech and tech-oriented companies, our bet Market’s redevelopment was to start with, on our approach proved right.

Perhaps too right. The Fulton Market and protect, the stunning historical assets District is now arguably the most attractive that formed the core of the area’s identity.

We also noted the intriguing influx of area in the city for developers. Most have

e

te en to w es st ser ty” he

planned and built responsibly, taking the historic character of the district into consideration. But we have to ask, when is too much of a good thing too much?

Crain’s reported recently that there is a proposed plan for a “massive, $600 million development” that will add ­approximately 1.5 million square feet of commercial and residential space near the heart of the district, at Racine and Fulton.

The problem is that there may now be too much development underway, or at least, too much density.

Let’s remember that the underlying traffic, transportation and utility infrastructure of the district is still pretty much as it was a hundred years ago.

Eventually, the traffic nightmare (which is already evident), the sense of overcrowding, the accelerating need for power and other new infrastructure, and the pricing on land and development will put a cap on this modern land-rush. Smaller investors and residential owners will be the first to be hurt, but others will surely follow—with negative

JOHN R. BOEHM

The district is now arguably the most attractive area in the city for developers. But when is a good thing too much?

consequences for the district as a whole.

Instead, the city should pause and again consider how it can positively and effectively promote the continued development of the district. That might mean saying no to certain “massive” developments in favor of others of a more moderate, but perhaps more creative, (and in the long run, more successful) nature.

The city’s responsibility is to protect and preserve the underlying character of the district, and that is what will assure the permanent success of the district after all.

Here’s one way to stop smash mobs

ISTOCK

founder of a children’s toy comonnect the dots: More pany, Crazy Aaron’s, and a retail and more, consumers are theft-prevention expert from buying from online marCVS Health. They explained ketplaces. Often we are how online marketplaces are unaware of the identity of the selllittered with stolen, counterfeit er. But we trust the intermediary and unsafe consumer products and we shop for the lowest price that are posted for sale by third-­ and best value. party sellers who only provide And at the same time, we have a screen name and who simply seen the disturbing security close their account and disapcamera footage of thieves rush- Democrat Richard pear when people realize what ing into stores, overwhelming Durbin represents the store employees, grabbing Illinois in the U.S. they’re hawking.

I have initiated a bipartisan armloads of merchandise and Senate. effort in the Senate to protect running for the exits.

We now know that leaders of organized consumers and businesses from organized retail crime gangs enlist teams of low-level retail crime. Along with Republican Sen. “boosters” to deliver stolen goods to cen- Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, I’ve introduced tral locations where the goods are resold, or a bill—the INFORM Consumers Act—that “fenced,” to often-unwitting consumers. And would require online marketplaces to veronline marketplaces are increasingly the ify the identity of third-party sellers and to provide consumers with information so venue for selling this stolen merchandise.

So why would massive marketplaces like they can contact a seller if the product they Amazon be complicit in fencing these sto- bought is stolen, fake or dangerous. Under len products and resisting the disclosure our bill, if sellers try to fence stolen goods of the identity of these criminal players? I online, they won’t be able to slip into the have been asking that question for years, shadows and escape accountability; the but the leading online marketplaces have marketplace platform and consumers will resisted transparency that would deter this know who they are and how to reach them.

We have worked hard to build consensus criminal activity.

Last November, I called a hearing in around the INFORM Consumers Act, and we the Senate Judiciary Committee, which partnered with Reps. Jan Schakowsky of Illibrought together experts who outlined nois and Gus Bilirakis of Florida who are the the disastrous growth of these online sales lead bipartisan sponsors of the legislation in of stolen goods. We heard compelling the House. The bill is supported by a broad testimony from witnesses, including the range of stakeholders, including ­consumer

P012-P013_CCB_20220124.indd 13

groups, retailers, manufacturers, and even many online marketplaces who recognize the time has come to ensure verification and transparency for third-party online sellers.

Enacting this bill into law will shine a light on shady online marketplace sellers and make it significantly ­harder for those who want to fence stolen goods online to do so. This will strike at the heart of the illicit and lucrative business model that has prompted the ­recent wave of organized retail thefts.

I also want to commend Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who last September established an Organized Retail Crime Task Force to coordinate efforts by law enforcement, state’s attorneys and private businesses to investigate and combat these crime rings. In December, the task force announced its first major bust, recovering tens of thousands of stolen items that were packed into eight storage units waiting to be fenced. Our legislation will help Raoul’s task force in its investigations

BLOOMBERG

C

We know online marketplaces are a venue for selling stolen merchandise. If we’re going to deter criminals and end online fencing, we need to get giants like Amazon to be more transparent.

by enabling suspicious online sellers to be quickly identified and contacted.

We don’t need to see any more videotaped ransackings of retail stores to know that organized retail crime is a challenge we must address. Fortunately, meaningful bipartisan reform is nearing the finish line, and we are working to see the INFORM Consumers Act enacted into law early this year.

Consumers, store employees and businesses alike will all benefit if we put the squeeze on the ability of crime rings to profit from retail theft. I will do everything in my power to see this reform through.

1/21/22 3:20 PM

14 January 24, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Oscar Mayer’s cheeky bologna facial mask

Check out the lunchmeat brand’s contribution to the self-care trend: A limited-edition, cold cut-inspired skin care accessory

BY JON SPRINGER Oscar Mayer is merging the beauty aisle and the deli counter with a cold cut to the face.

The lunchmeat king last week launched a bologna-inspired face mask that rejuvenates the skin while rewinding the mind to the pleasures of childhood— namely, the act of slapping a cool slice of bologna onto your face, after biting out holes for the mouth and eyes.

The stunt tweaks the beauty industry’s indulgent self-care regimens while providing the brand with a meaty opportunity to make an irreverent impression at the intersection of culture and fashion. It’s a fitting continuation of the Kraft Heinz brand’s “Keep It Oscar” campaign, which aims to elevate the 130-plus-year-old brand behind stylish and subversive takes on nostalgia.

The bologna design “induces unparalleled serotonin surges and a prolific amount of selfies,” the brand contends.

‘KEEP IT OSCAR’

Creative agency Johannes Leonardo is behind the effort.

It launched the “Keep It Oscar” campaign a year ago with a series of short spots establishing the meaning of “Oscar,” leaning into the brand’s marketing history, including its memorable jingle and Wienermobile.

“WE WANTED TO CREATE SOMETHING THAT WAS AS CLOSE TO ACTUAL BOLOGNA AS POSSIBLE— FROM THE LOOK, THE FEEL AND EVEN SMALL DETAILS SUCH AS THE BITE MARKS.” Melusi Mhlungu, creative director at Johannes Leonardo

Johannes Leonardo partnered with Jessica Pettway, a New York-based photographer, who according to the agency, “has a knack for spicing up straightforward shoots with super bright, colorful and cheeky” work. “This is exactly what we were looking for,” Melusi Mhlungu, creative director at Johannes Leonardo, told Ad Age. “Before becoming a reality, the idea has been something we’ve been working on for a lot of 2021,” Mhlungu added.

“Coming up with the idea was half the challenge; the second part of the challenge was how do we actually make these bologna face masks. We wanted to create something that was as close to actual bologna as possible—from the look, the feel

and even small details such as the bite marks. After a lot of trial and error, we produced a prototype we were all happy with.”

“Oscar Mayer has a legacy bringing levity to things that have gotten too serious, and beauty is a ripe territory to playfully subvert,” Lindsey Ressler, senior marketing analyst for Oscar Mayer, said in a statement. “Inspired by those who

used to playfully make masks out of their bologna as kids, this product was born as a modern-day way to spark smiles for fans of Oscar Mayer and beauty enthusiasts alike. This is the latest in our brand movement to create work that feels more like pop-art and less like traditional commercial advertising–inspired by the old, modernized for today.”

The masks, made in partnership with the Korean beauty and skincare company Seoul Mamas, are available while supplies last on Amazon for $5 each. They utilize witch hazel botanicals and seaweed-derived ingredients to protect, hydrate and promote skin elasticity.

Jon Springer writes for Crain’s sister publication Ad Age.

Lakefront, Asian carp projects get federal boost The government is authorizing a study of what’s needed to protect Chicago’s shoreline, and the Brandon Road project gets $225 million Efforts to preserve Lake Michigan and Chicago’s lakefront got a double boost last week in Washington with the announcement that work will begin on two key projects that will be funded out of the recently approved $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill.

In one action, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it has allocated $225 million to finish planning and start construction on the Brandon Road complex of dams and other devices on the Des Plaines River.

The project “is the last line of defense for preventing invasive Asian carp from reaching Lake Michigan” and the other Great Lakes, said U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Geneva, who was able to insert enabling legislation in the infrastructure bill.

The state also will provide some matching funds. It’s not clear how much more will be needed to complete construction, but the corps is unlikely to stop halfway, given that Brandon Road received bipartisan support not only from Illinois congressmen, but also from

P014_CCB_20220124.indd 14

“THIS FUNDING WILL ALLOW US TO DETERMINE THE BEST COURSE OF ACTION FOR PROTECTING OUR SHORELINE SOUTH AND NORTH FOR GENERATIONS TO COME.” Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Matteson

officials in other Great Lakes states.

The other project announced Jan. 19 has a much smaller initial price tag but will help clear the way for potentially much more significant work.

GETTY IMAGES

BY GREG HINZ

LAKEFRONT STUDY

Specifically, at the urging of area members of Congress and Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the corps said it has allotted $1.5 million to complete a study of what’s needed to keep the lakefront from crumbling amid higher lake levels and global warming.

“This funding will allow us to determine the best course of

action for protecting our shoreline south and north for generations to come,” said Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Matteson.

The eventual cost could be huge. For instance, the city is pushing a $3 billion plan to rebuild Lake Shore Drive that

includes adding significant amounts of new beach and park space in the area near Oak Street Beach. The additional space would serve as a shoreline buffer during storms, possibly qualifying as lakefront preservation.

Sen. Dick Durbin noted in the statement that Chicago shoreline work has received $185 million in federal funds over the past 20 years. Given climate change, a re-evaluation of what more is needed now is appropriate, he said.

1/21/22 3:19 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • JANUARY 24, 2022 15

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

Advertising Section To place your listing, visit www.chicagobusiness.com/peoplemoves or, for more information, contact Debora Stein at 917.226.5470 / dstein@crain.com

ACCOUNTING / CONSULTING

ARCHITECTURE / ENGINEERING

BANKING / FINANCE

FINANCIAL SERVICES

NON-PROFIT

Crowe LLP, Chicago

Walker Consultants, Chicago

First Horizon Bank, Chicago

Mary Corbett, CPA, was promoted to director in consulting, focusing on enterprise risk management. In this role, she manages internal ERM processes for the consulting group, Corbett identifying, assessing and developing responses to address critical strategic risks.

Kevin Spiegel, J.D., was promoted to managing director in tax services where he continues his focus on Spiegel state and local taxation, including mergers and acquisitions, tax incentives and consulting for businesses and individuals. Spiegel is licensed to practice law in Illinois and is also admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Walker Consultants, an industry leader in structural engineering, parking consulting, and building science expertise has announced Dave Ryan, PE, as President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Ryan was promoted to President and COO in September 2020 and has been with Walker since 1998 where his career began as an internship with the Chicago-based office. Mr. Ryan has a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois. Visit us at walkerconsultants.com

First Horizon is pleased to announce John Malloy has joined the bank and will be responsible for building out the Bank’s Midwest Corporate Banking practice. Malloy brings 25+ years of corporate banking experience. He has served as lead banker for numerous public and private companies across multiple industry sectors and has transaction experience in corporate and investment banking financing solutions, including lead arranger on syndicated credit facilities and public and private debt issues.

Peak Wealth Planning, LLC, Champaign

Shriver Center on Poverty Law, Chicago

After two decades managing the treasury and investments at the University of Illinois, Peter Newman, CFA, is providing wealth management services with Peak Wealth Planning, LLC. Peter helps individuals identify, plan for, and achieve goals such as creating steady income during retirement, investing to take care of loved ones, and minimizing estate taxes. The majority of his clients accumulated wealth through company stock, ESOP shares, real estate, or business ownership.

LaTanya Jackson Wilson has been named the Vice President of Advocacy at the Shriver Center on Poverty Law. Wilson will manage a cross-disciplinary team of experts and oversee the Shriver Center’s work to integrate policy advocacy, community-centered organizing, and legal strategy in pursuit of economic and racial justice. A seasoned public interest advocate with over 25 years’ experience, Wilson most recently served as Director of Advocacy at Legal Aid of Western Ohio.

CONSTRUCTION

CONSULTING

Skender, Chicago

West Monroe, Chicago

Skender, one of the nation’s top building contractors, congratulates Jacob Boyle on his promotion to Senior Project Manager.

Jacob joined Skender in 2016 and has 12 years of experience in the construction industry, including corporate interiors, healthcare, mission critical and life sciences projects. As Senior Project Manager, Jacob is responsible for delivering projects on schedule, maximizing productivity and efficiency, and controlling project costs for clients.

Cory Chaplin has been promoted to West Monroe’s firmwide Technology Practice leader to help elevate and realize the firm’s global product engineering platform aspirations.

Under Cory’s leadership, the Technology team will continue to focus on Data Engineering, Analytics, Cloud, Cybersecurity, and Technology Advisory services to help clients be digital. He encourages non-traditional thinking and excels at solving complex technology challenges. Cory joined the firm in 2002.

ARCHITECTURE Perkins&Will, Chicago Perkins&Will, global architecture and design firm, has promoted Mike Reinhart, RA, LEED AP ID+C, Managing Principal to Chicago Practice Leader for Corporate Interiors, and Brent Ross, Reinhart AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Senior Associate to Chicago Practice Leader for Sports, Recreation & Entertainment.

Reinhart steps into the role previously held

by Fred Schmidt, who will continue to lead Ross the Global Practice for Corporate Interiors.

Ross succeeds Lindsey Peckinpaugh, who was promoted last year to Managing Director of the Chicago studio. Both bring extensive client experience: Mike with KPMG, Aspen Dental, IMC, OCC & Constellation Brands; Brent with the University of Notre Dame, the Park District of Oak Park & West Lafayette (IN) Wellness Center.

ARCHITECTURE / DESIGN Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB), Chicago SCB has welcomed two new Associate Principals to the firm. Kristen O’Gorman, RA is a senior designer with an extensive portfolio of work in life sciences, as well as corporate office O’Gorman and institutional design.

She joins the firm’s new Boston office, which opened in June of 2021.

Jonathan Orlove, AIA joins the Chicago office of SCB, bringing 25+ years of experience, most recently at Adrian Smith + Orlove Gordon Gill Architecture where he served as Director of Project Management. He joins the firm’s architecture practice focusing on largescale mixed-use, multifamily, and office projects across the country.

P015_CCB_20220124_v2.indd 1

HEALTH CARE Cancer Treatment Centers of America®, Zion Cancer Treatment Centers of America® (CTCA), a premier national oncology network of hospitals and outpatient care centers, is pleased to welcome Dr. Carolyn Bhakta to the medical staff at its Zion, IL, hospital. Board certified in surgical critical care and general surgery, Dr. Bhakta cares for patients with breast malignancies at all stages. Her specialty combines traditional surgery with cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery techniques. For more about Dr. Bhakta, visit cancercenter.com.

CONSULTING

INFORMATION / DATA TECHNOLOGY

West Monroe, Chicago

Mavent Analytics, Warrenville

Skender, one of the nation’s top building contractors, congratulates Jeff Reist on his promotion to Project Executive. Jeff joined Skender in 2015 and has 16 years of experience in the construction industry. As Project Executive, Jeff is responsible for overall project quality, strategy and client experience. He works closely with Skender’s multifamily clients to understand their goals and exceed them.

Casey Foss has been named Chief Commercial Officer. She will build and lead a new Commercial Growth team responsible for driving growth, in partnership with firm operators. Her priorities will focus on how West Monroe helps clients be digital, using consistent and repeatable methodologies, offerings, and assets to drive value for clients as they overcome complex issues.

Foss joined West Monroe in 2008 and formerly served as Chief Marketing Officer, leading the marketing function for a decade.

Mavent Analytics, formerly Maven Advisors, welcomes Mike Alaimo as Partner and Talent Services Leader. Mike brings over 20 years of staffing and solutions experience in the IT & engineering, data, and technology industries, and most recently operated his own talent solutions company. A SHRM Senior Certified Professional, specializing in complex hiring initiatives that result in higher levels of efficiency, satisfaction, and retention, he is responsible for leading the company’s recruiting arm.

CONSTRUCTION

ENGINEERING / CONSTRUCTION

Skender, Chicago

Burns & McDonnell, Chicago

Skender, one of the nation’s top building contractors, congratulates Lauren Torres on her promotion to Project Executive.

Lauren joined Skender in 2013 and has 13 years of experience in the construction industry.

As Project Executive, Lauren is responsible for overall project quality, strategy and client experience. She works closely with Skender’s interior construction clients to understand their goals and exceed them.

Chris Ericksen joins Burns & McDonnell as a project manager focusing on managing water and wastewater programs like Clean Water Shreveport, La., and others. He brings more than 26 years of engineering experience focusing on large water and wastewater infrastructure initiatives, including master planning, investigative studies, preliminary and detailed design, and construction on numerous water utility projects.

CONSTRUCTION Skender, Chicago

LAW Taft Law, Chicago Ivan Golden has joined Taft as a partner in the firm’s Tax practice. He works with businesses and their owners on a wide range of corporate and tax matters.

Ivan is experienced in corporate, partnership, and individual income tax matters, as well as federal and state tax controversies. He also helps clients plan and execute significant transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, investments, sales, exchanges, and reorganizations.

NON-PROFIT Woods Fund Chicago, Chicago Woods Fund Chicago is pleased to announce L. Anton Seals – community organizer, educator, and Executive Director of Grow Greater Englewood – as newly elected Board Chair. Anton has served on the board since 2017. He succeeds Lerry Knox of Sovereign Infrastructure Group. “I’m grateful for the confidence my fellow trustees have entrusted in me to serve and also lead. In these times of uncertainty, I am reminded by the late great Marcus Garvey, ‘Lose not courage, lose not faith, go forward.’”

REAL ESTATE MB Real Estate, Chicago MB Real Estate is proud to announce the promotion of Andre Wiggins to SVP of asset management. Wiggins previously was general manager at the Richard J. Daley Center (RJDC), for which he won a BOMA/Chicago Gold Circle Award in 2021. At RJDC, Wiggins oversaw plaza events such as Christkindlmarket, reduced the building’s energy usage, expanded participation opportunities for minority businesses, and more. In his new role, Wiggins will assist in overseeing MBRE’s governmental agency assets.

To order frames or plaques of profiles contact Lauren Melesio at lmelesio@crain.com or 212-210-0707

1/21/22 4:05 PM

16 January 24, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Officials struggle to regulate pop-up COVID testing sites—and are warning patients to beware “I don’t think we can put this on the public to know” which sites are legitimate. “Guidance needs to be coming from the state and regulated at the public health level.” BY MICHELLE ANDREWS

WTTW NEWS

I

n recent months, mobile COVID-19 testing tents and vans have sprouted on urban sidewalks and street curbs as demand has skyrocketed in response to the rapid spread of the omicron variant.

Some of the sites run by private companies offer legitimate, timely and reliable results, but ­ others are more like weeds.

High demand and scarce supply opened the door to bad actors, and officials in some states are having a hard time keeping up their oversight amid the proliferation. And they are sounding the alarm that by visiting the pop-up industry’s sometimes makeshift tents, desperate patients could be putting their health, wallets and personal data at risk.

“These conditions change so rapidly,” said Gigi Gronvall, a ­ senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health ­ ­Security who leads the COVID-19 Testing Toolkit, which provides guidance to employers and others. “It’s not a surprise that these conditions were totally ripe for consumers to be gouged and to get fraudulent tests.”

Consumers seeking testing — either a rapid antigen test that provides results in under an hour or a polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, test that generally takes longer but is more accurate — may think all testing sites are created equal, but they’re not.

Following an investigation by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office in response to a number of complaints alleging ­“fraudulent and deceptive conduct” at various pop-up testing sites operated by the Center for COVID Control throughout the state, Raoul announced Jan. 20 that the Rolling Meadows-based chain would not reopen any of its locations in Illinois “for the forseeable future.”

testing locations across the state” and are investigating. She said consumers should contact Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office if they are concerned about fraud or criminal activity at testing sites.

Raoul announced Jan. 20 that the Rolling Meadows-based Center for COVID Control would not reopen any of its pop-up testing sites in Illinois “for the forseeable future” following an investigation into a numPUBLIC HEALTH EXPERTS SAY THEY ber of complaints “frauduHOPE THAT CONCERNS ABOUT A MOBILE alleging lent and deceptive TEST SITE’S LEGITIMACY WON’T DETER conduct.”

In Philadelphia, ­PEOPLE FROM GETTING TESTED. workers at a sidewalk COVID testUnfortunately, telling the good ing tent falsely claimed to be ­ working with the Federal Emerfrom the bad is not always easy.

Consumers at testing sites in the gency Management Agency, said Chicago area have encountered James Garrow, communications employees who aren’t wearing director for the Philadelphia Demasks or gloves or have been asked partment of Public Health, in an to provide a Social Security or cred- emailed response to questions. it card number before a test is pro- But FEMA told the department it vided, said Dr. Eve Bloomgarden, wasn’t funding any testing cenwho co-founded Illinois Medical ters in the city at the time.

“There are no quick markers to Professionals Action Collaborative Team, an advocacy group. Fake help folks know if a site is legitimate testing sites put consumers at risk or not,” Garrow said. “That’s why for identity theft, inaccurate or we’re investigating if it is possible to missing test results, and financial provide a placard to demonstrate losses if they’re charged for the that a site is legitimate.”

It’s hard to walk down a street in tests, which are typically free to some parts of Manhattan without consumers.

“I don’t think we can put this running into at least one or two of on the public to know” which the pop-up sites. Leading up to the sites are legitimate, Bloomgarden holidays, people stood in long lines said. “Guidance needs to be com- in the cold waiting to be swabbed. ing from the state and regulated Some vans and tents are c­learly marked with company names, at the public health level.”

Melaney Arnold, a spokesperson while others are ­operating out of for the Illinois Department of Pub- what appear to be ­rental vans.

The sites were also ubiquitous lic Health, said state officials “are aware of complaints for various in Los Angeles. In some places,

P016_CCB_20220124.indd 16

testing sites run by the same company were clustered within easy walking distance of one another.

In the pre-holiday rush, the operator at a Crestview Clinical Laboratory site on Wilshire Boulevard, who wouldn’t give her name to a reporter, said she also provided a VIP service from another testing company for people willing to pay extra for rapid PCR tests.

Public health experts say they hope that concerns about a mobile test site’s legitimacy won’t deter people from getting tested.

“If I had the choice between two options while there was a surge happening, one being completely outdoors and one indoors, I would choose the outdoor testing site,” said Denis Nash, a professor of epidemiology at the City University of New York. “And I would choose affordable home testing over both of those.”

In general, more testing is better than less.

LACK OF OVERSIGHT

Some testing operators are more prominent in neighborhoods where large shares of residents likely have health insurance rather than those where people are more likely to be without. For example, a map of testing locations for LabQ, a company that offers mobile COVID testing in the New York City area, shows dozens of spots in Manhattan but only a handful in the Bronx.

One weak spot in the system is that although city and state health departments keep close regulatory tabs on the labs that process COVID tests, they typically don’t regulate the site operators that administer the tests.

In Philadelphia, Garrow said, the only licensing requirement for COVID testing sites is that the lab they use have a license from the state health department showing that it meets federal standards under the law known as Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments. CLIA sets lab testing standards for accuracy, reliability and timeliness.

In Maryland, COVID testing sites must have a CLIA “waiver” from the federal government allowing them to perform the tests, said Andy Owen, deputy media relations director for the Maryland Department of Health.

In general, labs in the U.S. must have CLIA licenses, and requiring waivers for point-of-care testing is also standard.

In December 2020, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh issued a news release warning consumers about unauthorized COVID testing operations that could collect people’s personal identifying information and use it to steal their identity.

Since then, the department hasn’t received any complaints about pop-up testing sites, according to Aleithea Warmack, deputy director of communications in the consumer protection division of the attorney general’s office.

In general, a test site operator seeking payment from a health plan for administering a COVID test must have a national provider identifier, which comes from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said Kristine Grow, a spokesperson for AHIP, a trade group for health plans.

Although test operators routinely ask consumers for health

insurance information, asking for credit card numbers is not routine.

Individual consumers typically don’t have to pay out-of-pocket for a COVID test because it is covered by insurance or by the federal government for people who are uninsured. However, some people are charged if the test isn’t ordered by their doctor, is a rush service or is performed by an out-of-network provider, where “we do continue to see price gouging through the course of the public health emergency,” Grow said.

One way to identify a legitimate testing operator is to check lists maintained by states and cities of the testing operators they work with or fund. But many legitimate testing operators are not in the official databases, Bloomgarden said.

Some independent test site operators are “highly qualified,” said Scott Becker, CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. Becker went to a drive-through testing site in his neighborhood in Montgomery County, Maryland. The test operator told him which lab they used, and he received results with the name of the lab on them.

“They’re not all bad,” Becker said. “It’s just hard for Joe Consumer to figure it out.”

As demand for COVID testing grows, even legitimate test operators may not meet their commitments.

Theo Servedio stood in line with a handful of other people at the sliding door of a LabQ mobile testing van near Columbia University in New York in December. The 19-year-old sophomore planned to attend a fraternity party, but with the uptick in COVID cases, he wanted to get tested first. A sign at the registration table promised a 24-hour turnaround on its PCR tests.

“They’re both free, but turnaround for testing at the school has been 48 to 72 hours in the past,” Servedio said.

He got his results in 24 hours.

But others weren’t so lucky. ­According to a warning letter sent to LabQ in December by New York Attorney General ­ Letitia James, some consumers had waited more than 96 hours for their COVID test results despite the company’s promise of a 48hour turnaround. LabQ was one of several COVID test companies that received the warnings in late December and early January.

LabQ didn’t respond to a ­request for comment.

Kaiser Health News is a ­national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

1/21/22 3:18 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • January 24, 2022 17

Chicagoans in a sour mood as elections for mayor, governor near

BY GREG HINZ Driven by fear of crime, just 9% say in the latest Chicago Index survey that the city is headed in the right direction.

Buffeted by COVID, a so-so economy, and especially by rising violent-crime rates, Chicagoans increasingly are in a foul mood. That’s what’s reflected in the latest Chicago Index survey, with perceptions about the desirability of the city and the performance of its public officials showing signs of plunging.

Just 9% percent of those participating in the latest round of the survey, conducted for Crain’s and The Daily Line, say the city is headed in the right direction, a drop of 12 percentage points from the third quarter. A sobering 91% say the city is on the wrong track.

Sixty-one percent say their neighborhood remains a good or excellent place to live, but the citywide figure is only 40%, and just over a quarter, 28%, say Chicago is a good place to raise

children. All those figures are markedly down from previous editions of the survey.

Though several variables are driving such perceptions, the big factor appears to be crime.

A total of 34% say they feel safe in their neighborhood, 76% say the city is somewhat or very unsafe, and 81% say the situation is worse compared to before COVID-19 hit.

THE DROP IS ‘REAL’

Chicagoans are particularly down on public transportation.

Asked to rate public safety on transit, 4% feel very safe, 13% somewhat safe, 35% somewhat unsafe, and 36% very unsafe. Just over 1 in 10 have a preference ­either way.

Overall, 8 in 10 of those participating in the survey said the city is less safe than it was—half said it’s much less safe.

It’s not entirely clear how much of drop is due to actual shifts in public perception, and how much may have been caused by the open nature of the

ISTOCK

Perceptions about the desirability of the city and the performance of its public officials are cited as concerns

survey ­attracting people who are particularly upset.

Polco, the firm that prepares and conducts the survey, said it may be a mix of both but that results indicate the drop in public feelings about the city is real.

This round of the Chicago Index was conducted from Nov. 29 to Dec. 12, with 831 participants recruited by a variety of online and other methods, and an accuracy level of plus or minus 4%.

The bulk of participants, 76%, identified themselves as white only (not Latino), but results were weighted to approximate the ethnic, racial, age and sexual distribution of the Chicago area.

Almost all of those participating,

roughly 700 of the 831, are city residents, with the remainder living in suburban Cook County.

Results for questions about Chicago specifically reflect only the views of Chicago residents.

The souring mood has impacted on the popularity of public ­officials as the city and state head into a series of elections in which the entire General Assembly and City Council, as well as the posts of mayor and governor, will soon be up for a vote.

LEADERSHIP TRUST

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s job rating is down to just 15% positive and 86% negative. Though Lightfoot never has scored well in

­ hicago Index surveys, the latest C figure is down from the 23% she had in the second quarter.

Somewhat more surprising was a drop for Cook County Board President Toni P ­ reckwinkle, from 50% positive last summer to 31% now.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker still has a positive rating of 53%, but that’s a significant drop from 67% last quarter.

Interestingly, the rating for the Chicago Police Department has risen from 34% positive to 43%. That may be because public ­protests about alleged police misconduct and abuse have trailed off, replaced by extensive media reporting of violent crime.

Major warehouse project planned for McCook factory

BY ALBY GALLUN Less than a year after shutting down a big factory in southwest suburban McCook, a ­Caterpillar division has sold the 87-acre property to a local developer that plans a major warehouse project there, betting the booming market for industrial space will continue.

Chicago-based Bridge Industrial plans to spend more than $200 million on the development, which would include two buildings totaling nearly 1.2 million square feet, said Nick S ­ iegel, partner for Bridge’s Chicago region. Depending on the tenants that lease the space, several hundred people could eventually work there, more than offsetting the job loss when Caterpillar’s Progress Rail unit shut down the plant last spring, he said.

Developers like Bridge are trying to build warehouses as fast as they can to keep up with surging demand for industrial space.

Industrial property remains the hottest commercial real estate sector these days, boosted by a pandemic that has pushed retailers, logistics and e-commerce companies to retool their supply

P017_CCB_20220124.indd 17

chains as consumers buy more goods online.

Amazon has led the charge, opening a bunch of distribution centers in the Chicago area over the last two years, but big companies like Target and Home Depot have also expanded here.

“Everyone is leased. Everyone is busy,” Siegel said. “I don’t have any completed buildings that are vacant.”

MANUFACTURING LEGACY

The Chicago-area industrial vacancy rate is at its lowest level in more than two decades, and Siegel estimates rents in some markets are up 10% to 15% year over year.

Business has never been better for big developers like Bridge, which oversees a portfolio that stretches from New York to Los Angeles and into the United Kingdom as well. A Bridge venture paid $91.3 million in December for a 87-acre parcel at 9301 W. 55th St., according to a deed recorded with Cook County.

Bridge plans to transform the McCook site with a manufacturing legacy stretching back to 1935.

That’s when Electro-­Motive, a unit

of General Motors, broke ground on a huge factory to make diesel-­ electric locomotives. At one point, the plant produced more diesel locomotives than anywhere else in the world, according to a 2000 story in the Chicago Tribune. As many as 13,000 people worked there.

Locomotive production moved to Canada in the 1990s, but the plant continued to make engines until last spring, when Caterpillar, which bought ­Electro-Motive in 2010, shut it down. The factory employed about 600 people in manufacturing jobs, and 600 in engineering and office jobs in 2018, when the Caterpillar unit said it was considering closing the plant, according to a 2018 Tribune story.

Progress Rail hasn’t left ­McCook completely. The business maintains an office and engineering workforce as well as an engine-testing facility on about 33 acres it did not sell to Bridge, Siegel said.

BREAKING GROUND

Bridge expects to demolish buildings on its site in about two weeks to make way for two warehouses, one totaling 999,126

BRIDGE

In a red-hot industrial market, a property where thousands of workers made diesel locomotives and engines for nearly nine decades isn’t sitting fallow for long

A rendering of Bridge Industrial’s plan for a McCook warehouse. square feet and the other 189,953. Bridge plans to develop the buildings on speculation, without lining up tenants before breaking ground.

With the site’s proximity to Interstate 55 and I-294 and a big pool of potential workers, Siegel is confident Bridge will be able to lease the space. Large warehouses close to the city are hard to find, and many tenants, especially firms that deliver their products directly to consumers, want to be close as possible to large population centers, he said. One example: Target, which recently opened a massive distribution center right up the road in Little Village with an expected workforce of 2,000.

Siegel expects to lease the smaller building in McCook to multiple tenants, but said he wouldn’t be surprised if one

company leased the big one.

“My sense is it’s an e-commerce use,” he said. “It’s a very logical use there.”

Predicting how many people would work in the warehouses is an educated guess without knowing what businesses are occupying them. A typical rule of thumb for industrial development allocates one job for every 1,000 square feet, Siegel said.

That would work out to more than 1,000 jobs at the McCook property.

“The jobs that have been lost, I think you’ll certainly get back,” he said.

Bridge is not receiving any subsidies to finance the project, but it is seeking a 6b classification for the property, which would lower its assessed value, and by extension, its property taxes.

1/21/22 3:15 PM

18 January 24, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Judge denies Allstate’s bid to kill agents’ lawsuit

BY STEVE DANIELS Allstate agents can pursue most of their claims against the Northbrook-based insurer in Cook County Circuit Court after a judge rejected all but a few of the company’s motions to dismiss counts in the lawsuit.

The decision, issued Jan. 13 by Judge Mary Colleen Roberts, is a significant victory for the National Association of Professional Allstate Agents, or NAPAA, which sued the company last year on behalf of agents across the country for what it says is ­heavy-handed treatment in violation of the contracts under which agents are enlisted to sell Allstate policies.

The judge rejected Allstate’s bid to have the lawsuit thrown out because of what it claimed was lack of standing by the association to pursue the claims.

NAPAA, which is believed to have more than 1,000 agents as members, has had rocky dealings with the company over the decades.

But that relationship has reached a new low in recent years in response to Allstate actions to reduce what it pays agents and to exert more control over how they conduct their business.

CEO Tom Wilson is in the midst of what he calls a “transformative growth” plan, part of which entails reducing the company’s cost—including agents’ compensation—in order to make its offerings more price-competitive with faster growing rivals Geico and Progressive.

He’s also moved to sell more through independent agents, who represent customers and buy insurance on their behalf from any number of insurers. Part of the Allstate agents’ lawsuit centers on independent agents, who they allege are allowed to sell Allstate policies in territories served by an existing Allstate agent. That’s a violation of the contract, they say.

Allstate long has sold through independent agencies, but it says that happens in parts of the country not served by an Allstate agent.

The judge rejected Allstate’s motion to dismiss that allegation.

In addition, Roberts rejected a motion to dismiss agents’ complaint that a recent company requirement to use its phone system violate their contracts.

She didn’t impose a temporary injunction on the practice, which the agents had requested, but she

did say they might be entitled to damages.

In its response to the agents’ lawsuit, filed in court last fall, Allstate was particularly dismissive of agents’ complaints about the phone-system mandate.

“It is entirely possible that some NAPAA members will choose not to adopt (the phone system),” Allstate said back then. “In doing so, they will be making a choice that they no longer wish to be affiliated with Allstate.”

Roberts also rejected Allstate’s motion to dismiss claims that it has interfered with agents’ efforts to sell their businesses when they’ve decided to leave Allstate.

SHIFTING OPERATIONS

Allstate agents technically are independent contractors and not employees of the company.

They’re responsible for the costs of maintaining an office, hiring employees and benefits for themselves and their workers.

For nearly two decades, Allstate has lost market share to most of its largest rivals. What once was the nation’s second-largest auto insurer is now the fourth largest.

Insurers selling via their own army of agents—the nation’s

BLOOMBERG

The suit alleges numerous b­ reaches of the Northbrook-based ­insurer’s contract, including complaints about independent agencies and a phone-system mandate

largest car insurer, Bloomington-­ based State Farm does just that—have steadily lost ground to those selling over the internet and those selling through independent agents. Wilson’s strategy to put Allstate on a growth path has been to diversify away from the captive-agent model and sell more online, as well as through unaffiliated agents.

The vast bulk of the company’s revenues, however, still is generated by Allstate agents.

The agents are represented

by James Bopp Jr., a nationally prominent attorney best known for representing conservative

causes, but in this case taking on a cause he has said was a plain case of injustice.

“We are thrilled that we can continue to fight for what is right in this case,” Bopp said in a release. “Contracts mean something, and powerful, large corporations do not have the right to violate their contracts. This is especially true when a company like Allstate writes the contract and requires the agents to sign the contract, as written, with no negotiation as to its terms.”

An Allstate spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

ISTOCK

Walmart snaps up dietary tech from Peapod founders Deerfield clean-tech startup gets $50M from Microsoft LanzaJet is building out its first plant to make ­alternative jet fuel, starting in 2023

BY JOHN PLETZ LanzaJet, a Deerfield-based startup in the alternative-fuels business, has received a $50 million investment from Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund.

The money will help LanzaJet build out its first plant to produce sustainable jet fuel. LanzaJet is a spinoff from Skokie-based LanzaTech, which developed a way to use bacteria to turn carbon monoxide gases into ethanol.

LanzaJet combines the ethanol with traditional kerosene to provide airlines with an alternative that has the same performance as traditional jet fuel, but has about 70% less carbon

P018_CCB_20220124.indd 18

emissions.

The company’s biofuels plant, based in Georgia, is expected to begin production next year. The facility will have capacity to produce about 10 million gallons of jet and diesel fuel annually.

Microsoft, which has a $1 billion carbon innovation fund, is trying to eliminate more pollution than it creates by 2030. It also plans to use biodiesel for generators at its data centers.

The U.S. has set a goal of producing 3 billion gallons of sustainable aviation fuel a year by 2030, and the European Union has set a 2050 target to have a blend of 63% of its aviation fuel from sustainable sources.

The retail giant is rolling out a new tool from Chicago-based firm Sifter that helps shoppers with food restrictions avoid unwanted ingredients

BY ALLY MAROTTI Walmart is rolling out technology from a Chicago company that helps shoppers with dietary restrictions avoid unwanted ingredients.

The company, Sifter, was launched two years ago by the founders of Peapod, a pioneer in online grocery delivery. Sifter’s website lets users create a profile for their diet—be it for an allergy, medical condition, religious restriction, low-carb preference or simply a dislike of, say, onions. When they shop online, Sifter’s app narrows their options to products that match their profile. In the store, users can scan a product to see if it meets their needs.

Sifter is free to shoppers, and it has been adding thousands of items from major retailers to its database as it ramps up. Walmart is its first, big paying client.

When a customer walks into Walmart, they’ll see a QR code that will direct them to the retailer’s app, which is now outfitted with Sifter’s technology. The customer can select their dietary restrictions, then use their phone

to start scanning items.

The Walmart partnership is already spurring interest among other major retailers, said Th ­ omas Parkinson, who co-founded Sifter with his brother Andrew.

“It’s opening the door really fast,” he said.

Specialty diets are flourishing in the U.S. as consumers increasingly turn to diet and nutrition to reach health goals, according to data from market research firm NielsenIQ. Products that support specialty diets topped $53 billion in sales last year, up 15% from 2019.

MONETIZATION

Retailers pay an annual fee per store to use Sifter’s technology.

The company also plans to let consumer-packaged goods companies, such as Kraft Heinz or Proctor & Gamble, pay to advertise and sponsor products on Sifter. If a user denoted a nut allergy, for instance, a company could have their nut-free product pop up first in a search.

“As we get bigger, that’ll be a much bigger revenue stream for us,” Thomas Parkinson said.

Sifter has raised $4.6 million in

Sifter co-founders Andrew Parkinson, left, and brother Thomas Parkinson. funding, and is planning to raise more. Chicago-based investors include Hyde Park Angels and Valor Siren Ventures, the venture-capital arm of Valor Equity Partners. Sifter employs about 30 people.

Walmart said in a statement that working with Sifter will “make eating better even easier” for its consumers.

“Walmart helps people save money so they can live better, which also means living healthier,” the statement said. “We want to make it convenient for our customers to find and buy groceries that meet their wellness goals.”

1/21/22 3:16 PM

2022

RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE BROKERS Crain’s 2022 Notable Real Estate Brokers will recognize top Chicago area real estate brokers for their success and accomplishments during the last 18 months.

NOMINATE NOW! Deadline is Feb. 11

Nominate at ChicagoBusiness.com/NotableREBrokers To view Crain’s Notable Executives nomination programs, visit chicagobusiness.com/notablenoms.

Nomination deadline is Friday, Feb 11. Section publishes Apr. 4, 2022.

Other Upcoming Programs: 2022

NOTABLE EXECUTIVES OF COLOR IN CONSTRUCTION AND COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE

2022

EXECUTIVES OF COLOR IN MANUFACTURING

Nomination deadline is Friday, Mar. 11.

Section publishes May. 2, 2022.

Nomination deadline is Friday, Apr. 15.

Section publishes June 6, 2022.

To view Crain’s Notable Executives nomination programs, visit chicagobusiness.com/notablenoms.

tab doc.indd 1

22cb0032.pdf

RunDate 1/31/22

FULL PAGE

Color: 4/C

1/21/22 12:48 PM

20 January 24, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

CLASSIFIEDS

Advertising Section

.

To place your listing, contact Claudia Hippel at 312-659-0076 or email claudia.hippel@crain.com www.chicagobusiness.com/classifieds

Established Franchised Commercial Printer for Sale 90% Repeat Bus to bus.

Printing, Copying, Mailing Email: melvinrobin46@gmail.com

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES seeks an in Lincolnwood, IL, to support P2 and P3 core procedures including supporting process maps SM2-0 application review, SM2-0-0 application testing and SM3-0 part creation and drawing.

Requires Bachelor degree in Mechanical Engineering, and some experience or coursework in stress-strain relationship, material flow for steel and aluminum, single component creation using SolidWorks or other 3D CAD software and Microsoft Office Suite, operation of a hydraulic press and mechanical testing equipment, and operation of measuring devices used for fastener dimensions. Up to 10% domestic travel. Send resume to Lauren Wilson, ATF, Inc., 3550 West Pratt Avenue, Lincolnwood, IL 60712.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES HNI CORPORATION seeks a

in Chicago, IL to ensure holistic solution design.

Telecommuting is permitted. Apply at

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

Manage all aspects of industrial machinery and electrical equipment maintenance and job change management at moulded glass manufacturing plant, including machine set-up, configuration, inspection, optimization, repair, and upgrade.

Manage implementation of maintenance strategies, policies, and procedures to improve operational performance. Manage scheduled maintenance and development of preventative maintenance programs for maintenance and repair of machines.

Must have four years of experience in industrial machinery and electrical equipment maintenance at moulded glass manufacturing plant, including machine setup, configuration, inspection, optimization, repair, and upgrade.

Gerresheimer Glass, Inc., Attn. Craig Calloway, Vice President, Human Resources, 537 Crystal Avenue, Vineland, NJ 08360. Gerresheimer Glass Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES d/b/a Level Up seeks in Chicago, IL. Design, implement, & deliver awesome technical platforms & products for all constituencies (diners, drivers, corporate accounts, restaurants, internal tools). Applicants may apply https://www.jobpostingtoday.com/

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES – Chicago, IL. Design & develop micro services leveraging REST concepts, Spring Boot, Mule ESB, Swagger & YAML. For reqs & to apply, visit https://careers.jpmorgan.com & apply to job #:21022932. EOE, AAE, M/F/D/V. All rights reserved. www.jpmorganchase.com.

REAL ESTATE Off the Kennedy. Montrose/Knox.

4321 N. Knox Lots of public transportation

OUR READERS ARE 125% MORE LIKELY TO INFLUENCE OFFICE SPACE DECISIONS

Find your next corporate tenant or leaser.

Connect with Claudia Hippel at claudia.hippel@crain.com for more information.

P020_CCB_20220124.indd 20

GENSLER

BUSINESS FOR SALE

The building’s entrance at the corner of Kinzie and Wells streets is among the areas that will be transformed in the project.

Mart plans overhaul as tech tenants decamp MART from Page 1 way is better than everybody else’s, so we can outcompete.”

At the heart of what Vornado touts as “theMart 2.0” is an overhaul of the first two floors, a high-traffic portion of the mammoth building. Brokers who represent tenants say the space needs more than the food hall and revamped main staircase done under the most recent renovation.

Most visible from the outside will be a new “front yard” with green space and landscaping along the Chicago River, according to a presentation from building leasing agency Stream Realty Partners that was obtained by Crain’s.

Inside, Vornado plans a 27,000-square-foot tenant amenity and conferencing space, a “speakeasy” lounge and a 23,500-squarefoot fitness center—the building’s second gym—on the second floor.

Transformations are coming to the building’s entrance at the corner of Kinzie and Wells streets as well as its main south lobby. Vornado declined to confirm the cost of the plan, but is aiming to begin work this year with the goal of completing the renovation 12 months to 18 months after work begins.

Weiss insists the building has not lost any luster, but that the investment is in response to companies seeking workspace that entices employees to show up in person. “It’s ‘I have to be in a building where my employees want to come to get off the couch and come back,’ “ Weiss says.

Vornado is reinvesting in the property, even though its average rent in 2020 was up 29% from five years earlier, according to the company’s annual reports. The building also last year renewed its lease with 1871 and recently snagged a new tenant in medical-supply company Medline Industries, which signed a 12-year lease for 51,000 square feet.

Weiss says Vornado is close to landing another large tenant in the next couple months, adding to a roster that includes the Conagra Brands headquarters and the largest office globally for liquor giant Beam ­Suntory.

But headwinds are strengthening as new competition emerges and the rise of remote work softens demand. While the property

was slightly more than 89% leased at the end of September—outperforming the 80% average for the downtown office market—that is the building’s lowest occupancy rate since at least 2007, its annual reports show. The Mart’s net operating income for the first nine months of 2021 was down year over year by almost 18%, to just under $43 million, Vornado’s latest quarterly financial filing shows.

Then, there are the departures and shrinking tenants: Auto insurance software provider CCC Intelligent Solutions just left its 125,000-square-foot Mart office after more than 25 years for a new office building in the Fulton Market District. That loss came after media conglomerate Publicis Groupe left a similarly sized office in the building in 2018. PayPal, Yelp and software company VelocityEHS each listed some or all of their offices in the building for sublease during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, a bustling mix of restaurants, hotels, and major tenants like Google and McDonald’s has allowed Fulton Market to surpass the Mart as the destination for companies seeking to proclaim their edginess to the world.

SETBACKS

The setbacks are troubling for an owner that bet more heavily on the office market over the past 10 years.

Offices currently account for roughly 60% of rentable space at the Mart compared with 40% of showrooms.

Those numbers were reversed a decade ago, according to Vornado.

The showroom business has been challenged, too: Herman Miller, Knoll, Teknion and Allsteel are among the furniture and design companies that have moved or plan to move from the Mart to Fulton Market. Vornado executives say the company has backfilled the losses with other users.

Howard Tullman, who has led multiple Mart tenants as the founder of both 1871 and CCC, says he’s encouraged by Vornado’s plan to make the building “much more navigable and more welcoming” as many companies rethink their workspace needs.

“Hopefully, the Mart will have the (attractions) to serve the people in the building and pull people back” into it, says Tullman, who

has a private office on the building’s 15th floor.

The Old Post Office and Fulton Market aren’t the only competition.

Other buildings with similarly oversized floor plates but newer amenities than the Mart also offer compelling alternatives to tech tenants.

The developer that turned the upper floors of the Marshall Field building into modern offices recently beat out the Mart, among other buildings, for the headquarters of online ticket marketplace Vivid Seats.

“There was a time period where the Mart stood alone in many respects, and there was a mystique about the building,” says John Dempsey, who helped lead the Mart’s leasing team for nearly 25 years until 2013 and is now principal of Vanderbilt Office Properties.

“Now that mystique has been captured by many others, so how do you go back and separate yourself from the crowd?”

That’s not just Vornado’s challenge. Owners of many vintage downtown office buildings, including a handful on LaSalle Street, are trying to lure new tenants in a COVID-battered market with features that are much more outmoded than the Mart’s. Those landlords will be rooting for the Mart’s renovation to generate a run of new leasing. If it doesn’t, it’s a bad sign for their prospects.

The Mart has inherent advantages to exploit, such as its namesake CTA station. Brokers say one of the biggest challenges may be overcoming its size. As more companies come to regard offices as places to collaborate, rather than hubs for legions of desk workers, the Mart’s vast floors may be less attractive to prospective tenants.

One way to win tenants is to offer better deals, something Vornado has been willing to do. Brokers say the company showered incentives on Medline, including free rent and cash to build out its new Mart offices. Such outsize concessions are the new table stakes for landlords anxious to fill space in the COVID-softened market.

Weiss acknowledges that it’s “more expensive to make leases right now” as the market recovers.

“But we’re prepared for it,” he says.

“We’re Vornado. We can make deals. We have the capital and we can meet the market.”

1/21/22 3:24 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • January 24, 2022 21

CARBON from Page 1 net-zero initiatives, however, it’s not clear what investment criteria they’re using.

“While we will not release expected ROI on these investments, I can tell you that we have completed climate-related risk analyses that influence our overall strategy—from how we innovate and renovate our products to the ways in which we source our key ingredients, improve the energy efficiency of our operations and develop alternative packaging solutions,” Jonah Smith, global lead of environmental social governance at Kraft Heinz, said in an emailed statement.

Kraft Heinz is aiming for 50% emissions reduction by 2030, a goal it plans to build on to reach its 2050 target. Subsidiary goals exist within that framework, Smith says. The company known for such grocery staples as Kraft cheese and Heinz ketchup plans to source all of its ketchup tomatoes sustainably, make all of its packaging recyclable and get most electricity from renewable sources by 2025.

One project it has completed: solar installations at three of its facilities in China. They are expected to save the company $1.3 million over their roughly 25-year lifespan.

Kraft Heinz declined to disclose how much it spent on the solar installations.

Like Kraft Heinz, McDonald’s set intermediate carbon-reduction goals. The burger giant aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its restaurants by 36% between 2015 and 2030 and hit other targets on its way to total elimination by 2050. A spokeswoman says McDonald’s knows the initiative will require big investments, but believes it will also create business value in the long term. She declined to share investment figures.

PLEDGES

Companies around the world have taken the net-zero pledge to help advance the Paris Climate Accord goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. The International Renewable Energy Agency pegs the clean-energy investment needed to reach that objective at $131 trillion.

Experts say investments in emissions reduction often come down to risk mitigation. Governments could eventually tax carbon emissions, or climate change could disrupt supply chains. If McDonald’s coastal locations are submerged by rising sea levels, for example, that certainly isn’t good for profits. For their part, the companies acknowledge they have no choice but to invest in sustainability.

“Most of the work we’re doing is really a balance between what is right for the business and what is something we need to do from

a sustainability perspective,” says Susanne Alig-Mathis, senior director of sustainability and head of the net-zero strategy at ­ snackmaker Mondelez. “That’s not always an easy conversation, but that’s how it always boils down.”

Mondelez does not make investment plans as far out as 2050, Alig-Mathis says. Its sustainability plan usually stretches three years out, and like other companies, it reports progress annually. That progress isn’t always financial, but she says sustainability investments will create a more resilient business and supply chain.

The Oreo-maker launched a program almost 10 years ago meant to source cocoa, one of its top ingredients, in a way that is carbon neutral and helps the communities where it is farmed. Mondelez has invested $400 million into the ­Cocoa Life program, putting people on the ground to work with farmers on increasing yields.

Calling the program “holistic,” a Mondelez spokeswoman says it’s evaluated with key performance indicators that focus on environmental and social impact, rather than financial returns. Metrics include carbon neutrality, the number of farmers trained and changes in their income.

The program is an example of the kind of supply-chain restructuring companies will need to undertake to reach their 2050 goals.

JOHN R. BOEHM

Big companies have pledged to erase carbon emissions. What will that cost?

Susanne Alig-Mathis is senior director of sustainability and head of the net-zero strategy at snackmaker Mondelez.

Most of food companies’ carbon emissions come from their supply chains.

“In general, food companies have a real challenge on their hands,” says Thomas Theis, director of the Institute for Environmental Science & Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “It’s complicated, their supply chains are long and difficult to control because of things like weather.”

Another way companies can move toward their goals is by acquiring carbon credits, which would offset any emissions they

can’t cut. The price of credits would depend on demand, likely rising as more companies look to make up shortfalls in their emissions programs by buying credits.

One way or another, it appears companies and their shareholders will have to get used to corporate spending on climate change mitigation.

“We do have an understanding of what it takes and we also have a pretty solid understanding of what it would cost us, but we believe these costs need to be part of doing business,” Alig-Mathis says.

Executives weigh omicron assessments against their ambitions to deliver art CANCELLATIONS from Page 3 Those gyrations include responses like masking up musicians onstage, hiring understudies for ­ longer terms in case COVID strikes, and, in at least one case, mandating pre-show rapid coronavirus tests for all patrons.

Wary of the highly transmissible, new Omicron variant, many have postponed productions. For example, the Joffrey Ballet pushed its full-ensemble “Don Quixote” to June from February.

In theater, three of the bigger organizations in town postponed shows this month: Steppenwolf Theatre (“1919,” to the fall), Court Theatre (“The Lady from the Sea,” to Feb. 25) and Lookingglass Theatre (“Lucy and Charlie’s Honeymoon,” to autumn).

“We are taking it one show at a time to ensure the integrity of the art and the service to the audience are maintained,” says Brooke Flanagan, executive director at Steppenwolf. The North Side theater had a more popular-than-expected return to the stage with Tracy Letts’ “Bug” last fall, she says, and now plans to follow that with the smallcast “King James,” a play about NBA star LeBron James, in March.

“For the past 20-plus months, I have channeled that energy of, ‘OK, we need to make a decision with all of the facts that we have available at 12 o’clock,’ ” says Greg Cameron, the Joffrey’s president and CEO. “And sometimes by 2 o’clock, the world has changed again.”

Joffrey, like Goodman with “A

P021_CCB_20220124.indd 21

Christmas Carol,” took a major hit when COVID forced the cancella­ erformances tion of a number of p of its perennial holiday-season charmer and financial engine, “The Nutcracker.”

But the late-December cancellations—which also hit Lookingglass, Teatro ZinZanni and a couple of big suburban theaters, among others—were reactionary, the result of cast or crew members testing positive for COVID. What’s happening in January is more precautionary, with executives assessing the omicron science, weighing that against their own ambitions to deliver art, and opting to hit pause for a time.

“Everyone’s doing their own personal risk mitigation in terms of, what do they feel comfortable doing?” says Rachel Fink, executive director of Lookingglass. “And COVID is changing; it’s not going on a direct trajectory. So it’s about this constant adaptation.”

CHANGING ON THE FLY

The Joffrey’s Cameron points to a “golden lining” in moving “Don Quixote” five months into the future: “There’s no question in my mind that we’ll be able to sell more tickets in June.”

Smaller companies, too, are changing programming schedules on the fly. The Babes With Blades Theatre Company this month postponed “Plaid As Hell.” Jackalope Theatre, also on the Far North Side, is postponing “Enough to Let the Light In.” “This production deserves the

best possible conditions to run, and at this time, those conditions are beyond reach,” Jackalope Managing Director Tina El Gamal says.

Congo Square Theatre was planning its first in-person events since the pandemic hit in March 2020, slating its annual Festival on the Square and Vision Benefit for the first weekend of February. Now, the fundraisers will be held in June, when public-health conditions will presumably be improved.

“Even though it feels a little sad to have to delay that,” says Executive Director Charlique Rolle, “it also is somewhat exciting because our intention is to host it on Juneteenth. . . .We’re excited to be able to incorporate that in, to provide another celebration of Black art, Black voices and Black work through these events.”

Now, Congo Square’s first live event back will be the late-March debut of “What to Send Up When It Goes Down,” a play responding to racialized police violence.

A small number of organizations, however, are going ahead with productions, like the Goodman with its Jan. 22-Feb. 27 production of August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean.”

A big change, says Schulfer, is that the company is now putting understudies under contract earlier in the rehearsal process.

“We don’t want to be in a position where not having an understudy ready to go is going to cause us to cancel a production,” he says.

Like his peers at other organizations, Schulfer says he has been impressed with the willingness of

audiences to follow health protocols, including providing the proof of vaccination now required by the city and wearing masks during performances.

Performers, too, are masked during rehearsals, in addition to undergoing frequent testing.

“Our philosophy is, with the safety protocols we have in place, we’re going to continue to move forward until external circumstances make it impossible,” Schulfer says.

TAKING A TOLL

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has also proceeded with January performances, with new musician protocols. “We’ve made masks mandatory for everybody onstage who was not a wind or brass player,” says Jeff Alexander, president of the CSO Association.

KN95 masks are now required and testing is more frequent, especially for wind and brass players.

As for audiences, attendance fluctuated last fall depending on the news cycle, Alexander says, while “since omicron came into our lives,” the CSO has seen a rise in exchanges of current tickets for future ones. “But having said that, last Saturday night, we were at about 90 percent capacity. And Thursday was at about 78 percent.”

At other live music venues, the omicron surge is taking a toll on touring musicians and putting holes into clubs’ schedules in January and February.

Jake Samuels is director of music for 16” on Center, which puts on concerts at Thalia Hall, Space,

Empty Bottle, the Promontory and Beauty Bar. “Going into November, December, the shows were happening.

Staff was able to remain healthy.

And we were feeling really confident or feeling like we maybe had cracked the code,” he says.

Then came December and the rise in cases. “It sort of went downhill from there, culminating in pretty much all of the venues losing their New Year’s Eve events, which are so critical for us,” says Samuels.

One of the organization’s responses since Christmas has been to institute rapid testing for the more popular shows at roughly 900-capacity Thalia Hall, its biggest venue. Ticketholders get an advance email saying they’ll have to take a rapid test in a storefront near the hall.

“It was an undertaking, but it’s worked out extremely well,” he says, with about 10 to 15 people a night learning they were positive and being sent home and offered a refund.

Collectively, the organizations just hope to get through this and resume giving Chicagoans the sanctuary that the arts can provide.

“Yes, omicron is a bump in the road,” says Anthony Freud, CEO of the Lyric Opera, which postponed its planned January production of “Proving Up.” Freud says he hopes that, by the time rehearsals for “Tosca” are scheduled to start in February, “we’ll be returning to a situation comparable to September, when we were able to, within protocols, rehearse and perform successfully.”

1/21/22 3:21 PM

22 January 24, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Job seekers attracted to booming real estate market ignited by the pandemic NEW AGENTS from Page 3 estate agents say their ranks grew significantly in 2021, the hottest year in more than a decade for real estate. The Mainstreet Organization of Realtors, the largest suburban association, had 18,351 members, up 8.6% from the end of 2020.

In most prior years, the group’s growth was in the 2% range.

The Chicago Association of Realtors ended the year with 17,046 members, up 6.1% from a year earlier. And Illinois Realtors, the statewide membership group, ended 2021 with 54,748 members, an increase of 6.8% during the year.

Membership in the three groups overlaps, but at Illinois Realtors, the catch-all, the ranks have swelled by more than 4,000 people in 2020 and 2021, the two years of the pandemic.

“Real estate stayed open safely for the extent of the pandemic,” said Jeff Baker, CEO of Illinois Realtors. “People in real estate kept working, and I think people who felt the economic impact of the virus in their lives saw that.”

A booming housing market is generating a lot of business for real estate agents. Home sales in the metro Chicago area were up 14.5% in 2021 from 2020, according to Illinois Realtors data released Jan. 20. That’s on top of the 8.9% increase in 2020, when the

housing boom didn’t kick in until June. In all, 2021’s tally of sales was more than 27,300 above 2019, the last normal year.

It’s likely that in subsequent years, when the housing boom fades, some agents will leave the business, as happened after the wild real estate years of the early 2000s. A question for the last-in agents will be whether they’re first out.

‘NOT A TYPICAL JOB’

It wasn’t easy to break into the business, said Cannon, one of those last-in agents. New agents are exhorted to “get out there,” she said, and make contacts at the children’s school or sports events.

“But there was no going to soccer or hockey, no standing around the playground after drop-off,” she said. Instead, Cannon started mailing cards printed with some of her best recipes and her contact information. “That’s where my first business came from,” she said.

Yun and Baker both said the real estate business appeals in part because it’s not a typical job in an office hierarchy. “You’re employed, but you’re an independent contractor,” Baker said. “You’re responsible for your own success.”

Belle Jessen had experience driving her own career before the pandemic.

She was a dancer in Southern California, working in com-

mercials and other productions.

That work evaporated in the pandemic, and she moved home to the Chicago area, eventually becoming a Compass agent based in Bucktown.

Selling real estate in a fast-paced market, she said, is a lot like trying to make it as a dancer.

“It’s being available at the last minute for showings, like being available for last-minute casting in Clockwise from top left: Keki Cannon, Oscar Toledo, Belle Jessen my old life,” she said, and Mark Kaufman. and “the way you find work in productions is really in the Gold Coast. “I have flexibilabout who you know,” a funda- ity I never had,” and he expects to capitalize on that in coming years, mental part of selling homes.

Marc Kaufman felt similarly pre- as he approaches retirement age.

For some new agents, real estate pared for handling clients, from the focus on service and sales in was a fascination before it became the industry where he’d spent 30 their job. ­ merica Toledo, an agent with A years: hospitality, one of the employment sectors hit hardest by Real Estate on the Southwest Side, had been intrigued with real esthe pandemic shutdowns.

Kaufman didn’t get laid off, tate since his teen years, and he he said, because he was in cater- turned to it after his job working ing management, and “we were in door-to-door sales for a nationinsanely busy rebooking every- al company vanished at the onset body,” but near the end of 2020 he of the pandemic. By October 2021, he did his first deal: He found a switched to residential real estate.

“I work for myself,” said three-bedroom home in Ashburn Kaufman, a Baird & Warner agent for clients who’d been looking

to move with their baby out of a basement rental. That, said Toledo, made him “feel really good.”

DEVELOPING SKILL SETS

Nate Mendes, now in his 50s, has been investing in real estate since he was a student at Loyola University and bought an income-­ producing three-flat in Wicker Park. Mendes has both an M.D. and an MBA in health care management and had worked for two decades as an academic physician at Robert Morris University when it merged into Roosevelt University, coinciding with the dawn of the pandemic in March 2020.

The program he was in was going to shrink. Mendes went home to his partner and kids, “and my partner said, ‘You’ve always loved real estate. Why don’t you do that?’” In October, Mendes joined the North Michigan Avenue office of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chicago, and he recently represented clients who bought a house in Edgebrook.

Skills Mendes developed over years of working with students suit his new gig well, he said. “As a professor, you have to listen to your students, understand what their needs are and their insecurities,” Mendes said. Shepherding homebuyers through a housing market that’s low on inventory and high on demand is roughly the same thing.

Crain’s Academy Equity Leadership

A new session of Crain’s Academy for strategic leaders in DEI practices, with our partners at Pivot One-Eighty

March 10-11, 2022 Chicago, IL

For details, go to crainsacademy.com

P022_CCB_20220124.indd 22

1/21/22 3:22 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • January 24, 2022 23

Inside Bronzeville’s comeback

How the neighborhood, the onetime mecca of Black Chicago, became the city’s hottest new-home market

BY DENNIS RODKIN

JOHN R. BOEHM

I

n mid-December, Janelle and Kareem Edwards and their daughter moved into a newly built five-bedroom house on Indiana Avenue in Bronzeville, a spot that resonates for them historically and financially.

“We’re next to the first Chicago Defender building, which is pretty cool,” Kareem Edwards said. For four decades in the 20th century, the former synagogue next door housed the offices of the influential Black newspaper.

Historical inspiration isn’t enough to buy a house; price matters, too. After house hunting in Roscoe Village, the West Loop and other neighborhoods, the Edwardses found they would get considerably more house and yard in Bronzeville for the $725,000 they paid.

Add to that the neighborhood’s quick access to the Loop, expressways and the lakefront and its diversity, Edwards said, and “Bronzeville offers all the things we wanted.”

The couple bought one of the 28 new-construction houses or townhouses sold in Bronzeville in 2021. That’s the largest number of new houses or townhouses sold in any Chicago neighborhood last year, according to Crain’s analysis of real estate records. It’s followed by Humboldt Park, with 25 sales, and Logan Square and Bridgeport, with 21 each.

Moving to Bronzeville from the South Loop, the Edwardses joined an influx that has been quietly transforming the neighborhood. Bronzeville’s onetime sore spot, thousands of vacant lots, has become its strong point, making it possible to lift the area’s housing and income profile without displacing people who were already there.

It’s counter to the gentrification tension in Pilsen, along the 606 trail and in other areas, and if it works it could serve as a model for future revitalization of South and West Side neighborhoods.

One major factor driving sales in Bronzeville is affordability. “If you pick that house up,” Sheila Dantzler, the Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty agent who represented the Edwardses, says of their 3,000-square-footer with a two-car garage built on a standard 25-by125-foot lot, “and put it down in Lincoln Park, it would be $1.5 million, easy. In Lakeview, Irving Park, Lincoln Square, it

One major factor driving sales in Bronzeville is affordability, says Sheila Dantzler, a Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty agent.

Bronzeville had more than 3,000 vacant lots, according to Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, the legacy of tearing down several Chicago Housing Authority projects and of disinvestment and other problems that led to demolition of decrepit buildings.

Since 2017, many of those lots have been reactivated with newly built houses and townhouses. In that time, Crain’s counts more than 250 houses, townhouses and condos that sold for $500,000 or more in the area bounded by the lakefront on the east, the Stevenson and Dan Ryan Expressways on the north and west, and on the south, 47th Street east of Cottage Grove Avenue and 51st Street west of Cottage Grove.

Not all Bronzeville homes are so expensive. Many condominiums and older homes sell at more-affordable prices. But for the most PRICES ARE RISING FAST IN BRONZEVILLE, part it’s the high-end new that is replacLARGELY BECAUSE OF THE ENERGY PAST SALES construction ing vacant lots.

Among them are a set of GENERATE BUT ALSO BECAUSE THE COSTS OF 10 townhouses on Lake Park CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS SHOT UP IN THE Avenue, about two blocks from the lakefront Burnham SUPPLY CHAIN SLOWDOWN. Park. Five have sold, at prices over $700,000, according would be over a million dollars with the to Paulette Edwards, who represents the homes with fellow Coldwell Banker agent same finishes.”

Including 2021, Bronzeville has had a Sybil Martin.

The buyers, Edwards said, are “30- and five-year streak of new-home sales that is unmatched in other parts of the city, 40-something professional people, IT peonot strictly in numbers but in the way it’s ple, medical people.” The prices they’re transforming a neighborhood. On Jan. 24, paying would get them homes in betCrain’s will introduce a three-part podcast ter-known neighborhoods, she said, “but that explores Bronzeville’s history through now it’s cool to say, ‘I live in Bronzeville. the lens of housing, from the era of en- You should come see.’”

Like the generation that remade Lincoln forced segregation through today.

In the first decade of the 21st century, Park as an affluent neighborhood, buyers

HOW TO CONTACT CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS EDITORIAL � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 312-649-5200 CUSTOMER SERVICE � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 877-812-1590 ADVERTISING � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 312-649-5492

P023_CCB_20220124.indd 23

CLASSIFIED � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 312-659-0076 REPRINTS � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 212-210-0707 editor@chicagobusiness.com

who come to Bronzeville see opportunity.

“It’s one of the last places in Chicago where you can get a new, 4,000-squarefoot house for under $1 million,” says Michaela Gordon, an @properties agent whose buyer clients paid $815,000 for a new, 3,600-square-foot house on 42nd Street in December. “It has a variety of quintessential old Chicago architecture, and you’re not displacing anyone” by buying on a home that took over a long-­ vacant lot, “so why wouldn’t you buy in Bronzeville?”

In 2021, crime in Bronzeville was down 15% from four years earlier, although as is true in many parts of the city, it was up from 2020, a period of relatively low crime during pandemic shutdowns.

AMENITIES

Edwards, of Coldwell Banker, and others acknowledge that neighborhood amenities are only trickling in to Bronzeville.

Recent newcomers include the Friistyle restaurant on Prairie Avenue. There are coffee shops, a Mariano’s grocery and other mainstays, but the amenities usually associated with a hot neighborhood “are developing surprisingly slowly,” Dantzler says.

In a curious way, the pandemic may have glossed over Bronzeville’s relative lack of amenities, Dantzler says. These days, “you don’t expect to walk down the street for coffee, for dinner,” she says. “You expect to be home, in your house or in your yard.”

When retailers large and small are looking to open new places again, they will find a population of well-off homeowners in Bronzeville.

Last year through November, the medi-

an price of houses sold in Bronzeville was well over $550,000, according to Chicago Association of Realtors data. That’s higher than in some popular North Side neighborhoods, including Avondale ($497,500) and Portage Park ($370,000), and higher than the South Side’s Bridgeport ($453,000).

Citywide, the median price of houses sold through November was $318,000.

Prices are rising fast in Bronzeville, largely because of the energy past sales generate but also because the costs of construction materials shot up in the supply chain slowdown. When Crain’s began tracking the boom in 2017, $500,000 was an impressive benchmark. Now it’s old news.

In 2021, 14 homes sold for $700,000 or more, topping out at just under $890,000.

Coming this year, says Coldwell Banker’s Edwards, is a set of five homes on King Drive with prices in the $950,000s. With long experience selling the neighborhood, she says she is “absolutely confident” that demand is there.

Inevitably, fast-rising prices in Bronzeville are pricing some people out.

Dantzler believes the next alternative is Fuller Park, to Bronzeville’s west, across the Dan Ryan. With her husband, Erik Dantzler of R&D Builders, she built a 3,000-square-foot house on Wells Street in Fuller Park and sold it for $460,000 in December 2020. Another builder has three new houses proposed on Princeton Avenue, with prices from $399,000 to $499,000.

The Dantzlers plan to break ground soon on another, priced in the $500,000s.

“A lot of people who could afford Bronzeville two years ago at $600,000 can’t afford it now at over $700,000,” Dantzler says. “The prices have gone up so high in a short time frame.”

Vol. 45, No. 4 – Crain’s Chicago Business (ISSN 0149-6956) is published weekly, except for the last week in December, at 150 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60601-3806. $3.50 a copy, $169 a year. Outside the United States, add $50 a year for surface mail. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, Ill. Postmaster: Send address changes to Crain’s Chicago Business, PO Box 433282, Palm Coast, FL 32143-9688. Four weeks’ notice required for change of address. © Entire contents copyright 2022 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved.

1/21/22 3:23 PM

Realize Anything

What good is line of sight if you have no insight?

Insight incites change and change at the right time is foresight. We’re experts in that—experts in seeing what’s coming in commercial real estate and offering data and insights for the path ahead.

Examine everything, so you can realize anything.

cbre.com

tab doc.indd 1

22cb0021.pdf

RunDate 1/24/22

FULL PAGE

Color: 4/C

1/20/22 3:53 PM