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RIVIAN: Electric-truck maker’s delays give rivals a chance to catch up. PAGE 3

CRAIN’S LIST: Biggestbanks club has a new member. PAGES 12-13

CHICAGOBUSINESS.COM | AUGUST 2, 2021 | $3.50

GREAT LAKES POLLUTION

SWIMMING IN PLASTIC Great Lakes microplastics pollution is showing up in fish, birds—and your beer glass. PAGE 15

STEPHEN J. SERIO

FIND THE COMPLETE SERIES ONLINE ChicagoBusiness.com/CrainsForum

A breakout year for minority financiers

Dentists feel the bite of too few hygienists

BY STEVEN R. STRAHLER Loop Capital Markets was birthed in 1997 with a boost from the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, which hired the firm to examine refinancing options for bonds that backed the new Comiskey Park. In those days, minority-owned financial firms like Loop Capital relied overwhelmingly on public-

sector clients and early government set-aside programs that Loop co-founder and CEO Jim Reynolds described as a trap—a comfortable, low-margin sinecure. Now, with corporations in the wake of a growing diversityand-inclusion movement pressured to pay more than lip service to diversity efforts, wider opportunities are surging for Loop. It has doubled revenue, to about

JOHN R. BOEHM

Black and Latino players now run the books on some of Corporate America’s biggest deals. But is that enough? Loop Capital co-founder and CEO Jim Reynolds $200 million, since 2019, on the strength of deals awarded last year by AT&T, Allstate, Verizon Communications and other corporate heavyweights. Reynolds says an initial public See MINORITY on Page 25

A huge uptick in patients needing oral health care has providers scrambling to keep up with demand BY STEPHANIE GOLDBERG Surging demand for dental care should be a financial boon to an industry rocked by COVID-19 lockdowns. But only if dentists can accommodate the influx of patients. While some people skipped cleanings during the pandemic for fear of exposure to the virus, others postponed care af-

ter losing employer-sponsored dental insurance. But pent-up demand is just part of the story. Pandemic-related stress and habits have contributed to a wide range of dental problems—from cracked teeth to an affliction called “mask mouth.” And after staring at themselves on screens for more than a See DENTISTS on Page 23

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TECH TAKEAWAY

REAL ESTATE

Meet an executive who helps firms looking to hire immigrants. PAGE 6

This Bucktown home for sale has deep Chicago roots. PAGE 27

7/30/21 4:15 PM

2 August 2, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

GREG HINZ ON POLITICS

Who in the GOP is going to take Pritzker down?

ow that Gov. J.B. Pritzker has officially announced his candidacy for a new term, the challenge for the Illinois GOP is to prove to the world—and, frankly, itself— that it still can compete in a state which for decades was considered swing territory and which elected Republican Bruce Rauner governor as recently as 2014. There’s plenty of good campaign material to use, even if billionaire Pritzker will try to bury whoever runs in negative TV ads. Unfunded pension liability continues to soar and soak up money needed for education, health care and public safety. The state’s economy continues to lag the nation’s. Organized labor increasingly has a headlock on legislation, demanding a cut of anything that comes up. And while the Chicago Democrat Pritzker has merely rolled his eyes at the problem, the Legislature refuses to enact real ethics reform even as member after member heads to federal prison. So, there’s potential there. The question is whether the GOP is up to the task. At the moment, there are three officially declared candidates.

THE QUESTION IS WHETHER THE GOP IS UP TO THE TASK. One is McHenry County businessman Gary Rabine. His media spokesman sounded quite chipper about the prospects of getting his candidate on the phone to talk about issues when I called. But then another interview Rabine granted to downstate TV reporter Mark Maxwell exploded in his face, with Rabine saying he would not encourage people to get vaccinated for COVID-19 and the spokesman having to walk back Rabine’s suggestion without proof that the vaccines have caused thousands of deaths. Oh well. I was able to catch up with the second candidate, southern Illinois conservative firebrand Sen. Darren Bailey, and he certainly lived up to his reputation. Bailey said he and his neighbors are tired of “endless government” and called for zero-based budgeting through state operations. “I live on a budget.

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Unfortunately the state doesn’t.” OK so far. But then he went on to call for abolition of firearms ID cards, terming them “an infringement on our rights.” He said Pritzker has “destroyed” the state with COVID-related controls. Then he refused to say whether he thinks Illinoisans should be vaccinated: “That’s up to people to decide.” We didn’t get to Donald Trump and the events of Jan. 6—or Bailey’s tweet calling on the Illinois GOP to “condemn” U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger for criticisms of Trump. That leaves candidate No. 3, ex-Marine, former Illinois attorney general hopeful and ex-state Sen. Paul Schimpf from the Metro East area near St. Louis. Maybe it was the sheer comparison, or the fact that his campaign website labels him a “common sense conservative we can trust.” But I was rather impressed. Pritzker “has refused to stand up to the entrenched special interests on spending and other matters,” he says, but Rauner “missed an opportunity” to right the ship of state because he never realized governing means “building relationships and working together,” Schimpf said. When the state has extra cash, like now, it ought to pay down pension debt to save money long term, Schimipf continued. “I encourage people to consult with their physician and be vaccinated if it makes sense,” like he has, he said. And Trump, who sponsored him for a federal judgeship, “had his day in court and lost. We as Republicans need to be focused on what we can do to unite the country and be stronger.” Not bad. Perhaps they’re waiting for U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis to enter the fray, something he has hinted he’ll do if dominant Springfield Democrats give him an unfriendly map in which to seek re-election. Maybe that’s why state GOP Chairman Don Tracy wouldn’t get on the phone to discuss prospects for defeating Pritzker. Still, it’s getting late for someone else to run. Odds are rising that, in the end, the three names above are the ones Illinois Republicans will have to choose among in their 2022 primary.

Aon’s Willis deal demise ripples through business landscape The deep cost-cutting and layoffs Aon planned won’t happen—to workers’ relief. But another rival that was poised to benefit from the combo now suffers a blow. BY STEVE DANIELS The Biden administration’s new emphasis on anti-trust enforcement claimed a high-profile trophy with the collapse of Aon’s deal to acquire Willis Towers Watson—a development that reverberates beyond Aon’s London headquarters and Washington, D.C., to Chicago. The announcement that Aon and Willis would call off the deal, unveiled in March 2020 just before the pandemic upended commerce around the world, came after the Justice Department sued to block the transaction. Federal anti-trust regulators argued the combination of the world’s second– and third-largest commercial insurance brokerages would hamper competition without far more divestitures from Aon. Aon CEO Greg Case initially responded by saying the company would battle the feds in court but ultimately decided it would take too long to settle the issue. With the decision, Case’s dream of overtaking New York-based Marsh McLennan as the world’s largest insurance brokerage via the tie-up with Willis apparently comes to an end. Aon first approached Willis well over two years ago about a deal. A leak of the talks in early 2019 scuttled his first attempt. He returned a year later with the $30 billion proposed transaction. “Despite regulatory momentum around the world, including the recent approval of our combination by the European Commission, we reached an impasse with the U.S. Department of Justice,” Case said

The Aon Center in downtown Chicago. in a statement. “We are confident that the combination would have accelerated our shared ability to innovate on behalf of clients, but the inability to secure an expedited resolution of the litigation brought us to this point.” Under the agreement, Aon must pay Willis a $1 billion breakup fee. That amounts to about half of Aon’s net income last year. As recently as 2018, Aon generated just $1.1 billion in net income.

CHICAGO EFFECT

Aon and Willis both are based in London, but both have ties to Chicago. Aon’s footprint here in particular is substantial. Based in Chicago for decades until the tax-motivated headquarters move to London in 2012, Aon employs about 5,000 locally. The deal would have entailed substantial layoffs around the world to meet cost-cutting targets. How many of those would have taken place in Chicago never was disclosed, but workers here

were on guard. Willis announced it would plow its $1 billion windfall into buying back shares. Aon, too, has been an aggressive share repurchaser in recent years. Executives told analysts July 30 that buybacks would continue and that Aon would take on more debt to make that happen. The Chicago fallout isn’t confined just to Aon and Willis, both of whose names grace two of the tallest skyscrapers in the city— in Willis’ case, the former Sears Tower. Arthur J. Gallagher, the fourth-largest global insurance brokerage, is based in Chicago and was poised to benefit in a transformative way from divestitures Aon and Willis had agreed to in order to win backing from European regulators. Those acquisitions won’t happen, and Gallagher already has raised billions in equity to finance the now-scotched deals. Aon’s board expressed confidence in Case and his longtime partner at the firm, Chief Financial Officer Christa Davies, by extending their employment contracts to April 2026, according to a Securities & Exchange Commission filing. They both were set to expire in 2023. No changes were made to their compensation arrangements. Case was set to run the world’s largest insurance brokerage with the completion of the Willis deal. Now he will have to content himself with the nuts and bolts of day-today management of what looks to continue to be the industry’s No. 2 player for the foreseeable future— just as Aon has been for decades.

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CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • August 2, 2021 3

Rivian’s head start is shrinking The plug-in pickup maker’s delays give competitors a chance to catch up

JOHN R. BOEHM

BY JUDITH CROWN

Reese Xavier Walton

Growing pains: New weed farmers need money, space ‘Craft grow’ license winners have a year to raise millions, build facilities and open for business BY JOHN PLETZ AFTER WAITING MORE THAN A YEAR, Reese Xavier Walton and his partners finally won a coveted license from the state of Illinois to grow marijuana. Ulp. “When we actually won it, the gravity of the real work ahead set in,” says the 48-year-old, who quit his job in corporate training two years ago to take a shot at breaking into the business of weed. “I told my partners: You think the application process was challenging? That was the easy part.”

His Chicago-based company, HT23 Growers, is one of 40 applicants that won “craft-grow” licenses that allow them to operate up to 14,000 square feet of cultivation space for marijuana. The road ahead is daunting. Over the next six to 12 months, they’ll have to raise money, locate property, build out facilities and start lining up retail customers.

“I TOLD MY PARTNERS: YOU THINK THE APPLICATION PROCESS WAS CHALLENGING? THAT WAS THE EASY PART.” Reese Xavier Walton, partner, HT23 Growers

See GROWING PAINS on Page 25

Noncompetes are about to get prickly A bill awaiting Pritzker’s signature is lauded by some as a major breakthrough for workers’ rights. Others see danger ahead. Either way, he’s likely to sign it. BY ELYSSA CHERNEY When former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the Freedom to Work Act, or FWA, into law in 2016, the circumstances weren’t all that controversial. The measure, prompted by a Jimmy John’s policy that barred employees from getting hired at rival sandwich shops, would protect low-

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wage workers from noncompete agreements that stifled their earning potential. Even Rauner, a politician reviled by organized labor groups, got on board with the idea after the Illinois Attorney General’s Office sued the chain known for its “freaky fast” delivery Now the FWA, originally limited in scope, is set to become much more expansive.

Under a bill passed unanimously by lawmakers this spring, and which Gov. J.B. Pritzker still must sign, employers are prohibited from imposing noncompetes on workers earning below $75,000 and from using nonsolicitation agreements on those making below $45,000. Advocates laud the move as a victory for economic mobility—especially as employ-

ees re-evaluate their priorities and job preferences during the pandemic. But some local businesses worry the changes are coming at a time of monumental uncertainty. With President Joe Biden recently directing the Federal Trade Commission to rein in the “unfair use” of noncompetes, the rules could continue shifting, and companies fear more restrictions will put their proprietary information, client lists and employee See NONCOMPETE on Page 23

The longer it takes Rivian to get its widely anticipated electric trucks to market, the more it risks losing first-mover advantage in an increasingly crowded field. The startup that’s manufacturing trucks in downstate Normal recently announced its electric pickup and SUV won’t be available until September and beyond. It’s the third time Rivian has pushed back its original launch target of late 2020, a goal thwarted by COVID-19. With base prices in the $67,500 range, Rivian faces a cluster of lower-priced rivals, including Ford’s F-150 Lightning pickup, due out next spring, Tesla’s futuristic Cybertruck and entries from General Motors and Dodge. “Being first to market may be a nice bragging point for Rivian, but quickly it won’t matter,” says David Whiston, U.S. autos equity analyst at Morningstar. “The EV pickup market is about to get very crowded.” Prospective buyers who put down $1,000 refundable deposits are getting restless and hedging their bets. New Hampshire health care consultant Joe Paduda says he became frustrated after waiting more than two years for his R1T pickup. He bought a 2019 electric BMW sedan and put down a deposit for the Ford Lightning. “I’m going to go with whichever one comes first and in which manufacturer do I have more trust,” he says. “Right now, I have more trust in Ford.” Electric vehicles are becoming a hot commodity as climate change See RIVIAN on Page 24

SLOWING START Delays have cut into Rivian’s lead over rival electric trucks. Vehicle

Planned launch

Rivian R1T electric pickup

September*

GMC Hummer EV

Late 2021

Tesla Cybertruck Late 2021 to 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

Spring 2022

Chevrolet Silverado Late 2022 to 2023 Dodge Ram pickup Source: Crain’s research

2024 *R1S SUV to follow

7/30/21 4:14 PM

4 August 2, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

ON BUSINESS

How much more are you willing to pay for ketchup?

1 percent in North America, where the pandemic stock-up phenomenon was particularly pronounced. To be sure, price hikes aren’t the only option for food companies when input costs rise. They can cut spending elsewhere to boost efficiency, fiddle with package sizes and hedge commodity costs in futures markets. “(Pricing) is one tool in their arsenal to offset higher costs,” says analyst Erin Lash of Morningstar. Packaged-food companies are pulling most of those levers to one degree or another. Yet many are leaning hard on price hikes. Mondelez CFO Luca Zaramella called pricing “a key contributor” to strong worldwide organic revenue growth of 6.2 percent in the second quarter. Conagra, meanwhile, predicts overall price increases of 3 to 4 percent this year. Kraft Heinz, which reports second-quarter results this week, has yet to raise prices, CEO Miguel Patricio told Time magazine in June. But the maker of such grocery staples as Kraft cheese and Heinz ketchup is “studying” possible price HIGHER COSTS HAVE STARTED hikes as costs rise, Patricio said. For now, he said, TO SQUEEZE PROFIT MARGINS. “We are very concerned, concerned but acting to mitigate the possibility of inflation,” Conagra CEO Sean increasing prices through effiConnolly told Bloomberg. “It’s ciencies.” the highest inflation level our Raising prices is one thing. company has seen in as many Making price hikes stick is years as we can remember.” another. It’s too early to say if Higher costs have started to squeeze profit margins. Conagra the increases put through so far will hold, much less predict how said inflation contributed to a much higher prices might rise. decline in quarterly gross profit, The answer will vary from comand Mondelez flagged cost increases as a factor in declining pany to company and product to product, depending on pricing operating income in its North power. Lash says pricing power American business. tends to be greater in packThe simplest response, of aged-foods categories with fewer course, is price hikes. Theoretically, companies could just raise low-priced store brands, such as chocolate. Brand-name compaprices to offset higher costs. nies have less pricing power in Easier said than done. commoditized categories where Consumers may balk at paying private label brands abound, higher prices, turning instead such as dairy, meat and cheese. to cheaper alternatives. In That suggests snack-makers like addition to potential consumMondelez have more pricing er resistance, packaged-food companies also have to consider power than grocery staples suppliers like Kraft Heinz. possible pushback from the The real key to pricing power, retail chains they sell to. Lash says, is pairing an increase Another possible obstacle is with some kind of innovation slowing demand. Already, there that meets changing consumer are signs that consumers who preferences. For example, smallstocked up on packaged foods er packages might now appeal during last year’s lockdowns are to consumers who are becoming spending less on groceries as more mobile, giving a food comthey venture out again. Conagra pany leeway to charge more on a said its 10 percent decline in volume basis. fourth-quarter organic sales In the end, pricing power was “driven by lapping the prior corresponds to perceptions of year’s significant surge in atvalue. Consumers are more home food consumption at the onset of the COVID-19 pandem- likely to accept higher prices for ic.” Mondelez’s quarterly organic products they consider uniquely valuable. revenue edged down less than test of pricing power looms for big food companies facing surprisingly sharp cost increases. As the economy recovers from pandemic lockdowns, supply chain bottlenecks and shortages are driving up costs at food giants, including local stalwarts Mondelez International, Kraft Heinz and Conagra Brands. On Mondelez’s second-quarter earnings call July 28, CEO Dirk Van de Put told investors the Chicago-based maker of Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers, Cadbury chocolates and other snacks is seeing higher costs for everything from edible oils to resins, packaging and labor. Input-cost inflation already is outstripping the elevated projections that executives penciled in earlier this year. The worst is yet to come, they predict. Conagra CFO David Marberger said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call July 13 that the frozen-food specialist now expects costs to rise 9 percent in the fiscal year that started July 1, up from a forecast of 6 percent in April. “This is an atypical level of

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Innovators will lead in the workplace of the future How do individuals and companies prepare for the coming changes? Self-starters will be fine. Those waiting for direction may be waiting too long. BY EMILY DRAKE AND TODD CONNOR Chicago Comes Back is a weekly series on ChicagoBusiness.com providing leadership insights to help your business move forward, written by leadership consultants Emily Drake and Todd Connor. Drake and Connor facilitate Crain’s Leadership Academy. Drake is a licensed therapist, owner of the Collective Academy and a leadership coach. Connor is the founder of Bunker Labs and the Collective Academy and is also a leadership consultant. Check out previous installments at ChicagoBusiness.com/comesback. As we explore re-emerging out of the pandemic, the future of work will look very different. Exactly how is uncertain, but our Chicago Comes Back columnists have some predictions: Todd Connor forecasts the rise of thirdshift entrepreneurs, while Emily Drake challenges the future of how we define workplace loyalty and even the traditional employment relationship. EMILY DRAKE: One of the things I’ve found interesting is looking at generational working patterns: Our very relationship to work, what drives our attitudes about the work we choose and what prioritizes our decisions about how, where and when we want to work. I think it’s an oversimplification to typecast millennials vs. boomers, for example—a tale as old as time, that the generation before besmirches the generation after (hello, parents and children)—but we do know that people born between 1946 and 1964 had a job tenure that averaged 15 years, and those born between 1980 and 1995 have an average tenure that’s between 18 and 24 months. That’s dramatic, and we’ll see how that changes as we integrate Gen Z in entry-level jobs and through promotions. TODD CONNOR: There’s a lot in this data and these labels, as you acknowledge, so we don’t want to oversimplify. But trends are fascinating, and the trend toward shorter tenure is real. There’s another pattern that serves as backdrop: We’ve been on a nearly 50-year decline in this country of entrepreneurial activity, which is something of a national crisis, though that strikes people as surprising given the celebrity culture that surrounds entrepreneurs and the explosion of entrepreneurship supports in the last 20 years. Last year, and this is a bright spot, we saw 1 million people starting businesses. ED: So, tenure in full-time employment roles is down and entrepreneurship, at least in this past year, is up. And we’ve also shared previously that some one in four people over age 45 are contemplating a career change once the pandemic is over—which, some would argue, is upon us. The future of work is in the balance. I’ve always appreciated your theory on what comes next, especially from a place of experience. So, tell me, what is a “third-shift entrepreneur?”

ALAMY

JOE CAHILL

CHICAGO COMES BACK

TC: The Third Shift Entrepreneur, now a framework and a book, is an argument that people will increasingly hold multiple jobs and curate a portfolio of professional responsibilities that looks not just like an apportionment of time, which is finite, but rather a contractual lending of our talents toward various efforts in which our contribution is measured by just that, our contribution, rather than exclusively by our time. This won’t be universal, of course, but there will be a subset of professionals who opt into this sort of an arrangement: having a job, while pursuing alternative interests as entrepreneurs and perhaps supporting other teams and organizations, as well. ED: You’re speaking my language. That’s how my career has been shaped: running a business that designs and implements leadership development programs for corporate clients, launching a social justice initiative that evolved into something of a volunteer effort, seeing individual clients as a therapist and then deciding to sunset that work stream now. It has been a bit fluid but also fulfilling. If this is the future for more people, how do individuals, as well as companies, prepare? TC: Well, that’s the million-dollar question and why I wrote the book. For individuals, I offer a manifesto that you can start new things today, and do not—and should not—quit your job to do so. We should embrace our creative interests and have some grace for ourselves if it doesn’t pan out. Given we will see far fewer 15-year careers, the immutable and indispensable skillset, therefore, is to get good at spinning things up to meet cur-

rent challenges and to learn what you need to in the process. People who can be self-activated in that way will be fine. Those waiting for direction may be waiting too long. I’ll put the question back on you: If we assume this trend toward more third-shift entrepreneurs, what’s your advice for them? ED: I think a company’s definition of loyalty will need to be reframed. Companies must not assume disloyalty for people pursuing, and celebrating, side efforts and initiatives. In fact, innovation might best be curated from those employees, or contractors as it were, that have the most portfolio of outside-work interests. The hopeful version of me thinks that we might make a seat at the table for artists, musicians, academics, customers and others not traditionally invited. I think it opens the way we work, collaborate and think, and it pulls down the boundaries of what a company, and an employee relationship, traditionally was. TC: Loyalty will need to be reframed. So will skills and the traditional HR function. This is already underway, and I think it’s the third-shift entrepreneurs who will capitalize on innovations from within the companies they are at—building businesses without ever leaving their jobs and solving the problems they see coming before others have that prescient view. For educators and educational institutions, the capacity we will need will be less knowledge-based, which is ephemeral, and more important that we instill this capacity across all generations to see a problem and attempt a solution. That thinking and behavior will never be obsolete.

7/30/21 3:40 PM

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6 AUGUST 2, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

NOMINATION PROGRAMS

to honor any deserving colleague

EXECUTIVES IN MARKETING NOMINATION DEADLINE: AUGUST 6 PUBLICATION DATE: SEPTEMBER 27

Burke, 57, is president and CEO of Envoy Global, a software company that helps HR departments at firms such as Cars.com and Grubhub navigate the immigration process. He also owns Envoy’s affiliated law firm, Global Immigration Associates. Burke and his wife, actress Joan Cusack, live on the Near North Side and have two grown sons. By Laura Bianchi

Your worst jobs? Picking blueberries in blistering heat when I was in grade school, night shifts washing oil off of just-manufactured screws and bolts, and unfolding dollar bills for the CTA. We had to wear coveralls with the pockets sewn shut. Office jobs are a lot easier.

What worked? I took an 11-week meditation class that helps slow me down and be more present. I want to maintain the energy and optimism that have driven me but leaven it with focus. Frankly, it’s hard.

2021

How did you escape quarantine during COVID? I bought a new Vespa 300, put on my helmet and got some fresh air. It’s an instant mood adjustment.

NONPROFIT BOARD LEADERS

Featuring top Chicago area board members with at least five years of board experience who have advanced the cause of a nonprofit organization and raised its profile in the community.

2021

NOMINATION DEADLINE: AUGUST 20 PUBLICATION DATE: OCTOBER 11

A hurdle you have overcome? If I had grown up 30 years later, I would have been the poster child for ADHD. I always had a lot of energy and struggled to focus, even with therapy and medication.

Recognizing some of the top marketers responsible for branding, PR, communications, partnerships, recruiting, training, data analytics and beyond for some of the most iconic companies in Chicago.

Dick Burke

2021

THE TECH TAKEAWAY

A scar that tells a story? During a rugby match when I was at College of the Holy Cross, I played against a guy who looked and acted like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He completely crushed my shoulder 5 minutes into a game. After surgery, my inglorious career came to a screeching end.

MILITARY VETERAN EXECUTIVES NOMINATION DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 24 PUBLICATION DATE: NOVEMBER 8

Highlighting accomplished military veteran executives in the Chicago area who are serving in a senior level role at his or her company and have made significant contributions to advancing the issues that affect veterans in the workplace.

GEN X LEADERS IN ACCOUNTING, CONSULTING AND LAW NOMINATION DEADLINE: OCTOBER 1 PUBLICATION DATE: NOVEMBER 22

Nominate at ChicagoBusiness.com/NotableNoms

P006_CCB_20210802.indd 6

What would surprise people about you? I head up a tech company, but I’m not trained in tech or business. I was a lawyer. Being a lawyer is about identifying risks and mitigating them. Business is about identifying opportunity and capitalizing on it, which was more exciting, but the transition was tough.

Top Chicago area accountants, consultants and attorneys, between 40-55 years of age, who are serving in a senior-level role at his or her company and have made significant contributions to advancing their fields.

2021

An interesting immigration factoid? In Illinois, immigrant-founded Fortune 500 companies accounted for $5.1 billion in revenue and 1.4 million employees in 2017. Imagine Chicago without Walgreens, Boeing, State Farm, Baxter or Mondelez. Do we really need less immigration?

Did you get any advice about that? I discussed it with Jamie Dimon (now CEO of JPMorgan Chase) over dinner, and he said, “Don’t hire any assholes.”

7/30/21 3:40 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • August 2, 2021 7

Blackstone’s stake means a new day for GTCR BY STEVE DANIELS Blackstone’s minority ownership stake in GTCR is the New York-based asset-management giant’s first such investment in a Chicago-based private-equity firm. The transaction release, issued July 27, offered few details on how the deal transpired or the strategic reasons behind it. GTCR declined to comment beyond the release. But the 41-year-old firm’s first equity sale to an outside interest marks a new chapter. No longer will the managing partners—former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner was one of the founders before retiring prior to his run for governor—be the only ones to chart its course. Now one of the world’s most sophisticated investors will have a say in how the firm is run and, more importantly, its future ownership. GTCR is the 11th private-equity

firm around the country in which Blackstone’s GP Stakes unit has taken a minority ownership position, a spokeswoman said. Others, including relatively high-profile names like Leonard Green & Partners and Francisco Partners, are based in California or New York. Blackstone has been investing in private-equity firms since 2017.

GROWTH SPURT

With more than $24 billion under management and 101 employees in Chicago, GTCR has grown substantially in the past two years. At the end of 2019, the firm had $11.6 billion under management, according to Crain’s list of the largest local private-equity firms. In a release, GTCR managing directors Collin Roche and Dean Mihas called Blackstone’s stake a “passive” investment. “Blackstone is an exceptional institution and we expect they will bring resources and perspective that will help

us as we continue to serve our limited partners, build our franchise and invest our funds over the long term,” they said in the release. In an email, Blackstone spokeswoman Paula Chirhart described the unit’s investment approach as “long-term partnerships . . . in which we make available Blackstone’s robust in-house capabilities that range from purchasing to achieve portfolio company savings to strategic business advice.” To date, Blackstone has yet to liquidate a position in any of the 11 private-equity firms it’s bought into. But that’s not to say it won’t in the future. The investments are doled out of a dedicated, “perpetual” fund that doesn’t entail the typical pressures over the intermediate term to liquidate investors’ positions, she said. “The objective of the fund is to generate current yield and longterm appreciation for our inves-

COSTAR GROUP

The tapping of outside capital for the first time in its 41-year history means that one of Chicago’s most prominent private-equity firms no longer calls all its own shots in terms of how it is run and, more importantly, its future ownership

GTCR is based at 300 N. LaSalle in River North. tors,” she said. “While we may eventually seek exits, we have not done so to date, and there is no timing pressure to do so.” Translation: GTCR likely needn’t worry about new ownership for some years. But that time will come eventually now that the firm has tapped outside equity.

When it does, the choice is likely to be between an initial public offering or another private-equity owner. Blackstone isn’t just an investor in private-equity firms, of course. It is the largest private-equity firm in the country. The firm has been publicly traded since 2007.

Move-outs push suburban office vacancy to record high BY DANNY ECKER Real estate investors betting the COVID-19 pandemic will boost the suburban office market are still waiting for the numbers to start turning in their favor. Driven up by the loss of nearly half a million square feet of tenants, the office vacancy rate in the Chicago suburbs rose to 26.1 percent as of the end of June, according to data from real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle. That’s the highest mark JLL has tracked in its two decades of data and up from 25.5 percent at the end of the first quarter, which itself marked a record. It’s an illustration of the lingering fallout for suburban office landlords from a crisis that has given rise to remote work and pushed many companies to rethink their workspace needs, in most cases reducing their footprints. Leasing activity has picked up dramatically this year compared to a mostly frozen 2020, but the cloud of companies cutting back on space continues to hover over anybody trying to land new tenants. That’s good news, meanwhile, for companies hunting for workspace as they start calling employees back to offices. JLL Senior Vice President and tenant rep Kellen Monti said his clients are seizing the moment by finding bargain sublease deals and commanding more concessions like free rent and cash for office build-outs. “It’s a highly competitive mar-

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ket, and when one building (gets more aggressive), it leverages another building to have to do it,” Monti said. “It’s just more competitive than it was in 2019.” Move-outs are still dramatically outpacing move-ins even as effects of the pandemic start to subside. Net absorption, a key demand metric that tracks the change in the amount of leased and occupied space compared with the previous period, fell by 470,000 square feet during the second quarter, according to JLL. That was the second-biggest demand drop-off for a single quarter in four years, the brokerage’s data shows. Among the biggest new blocks of available space: HSBC, disaster recovery company Q-Tech, industrial automation company Omron and insurance company Protective Life collectively moved out of more than 240,000 square feet in office buildings in the western and northwest suburbs, according to JLL. Some companies, including Costco and Ajinomoto, moved into new spaces in the northwest suburbs during the second quarter, but the departures far outweighed those additions.

UNCERTAIN FUTURE

The numbers overall aren’t promising for investors predicting that a pandemic-induced surge of millennials moving to the suburbs over the past 16 months will translate into more demand for suburban workspace, though it’s still unclear how long the demand

COSTAR GROUP

Even as many companies call workers back to offices, they’re ditching far more space than they’re moving into—good news for tenants and bad for landlords

HSBC moved out of more than 80,000 square feet at 1421 W. Shure Drive during the second quarter and put the space up for sublease. erosion will last. “Nine months ago we thought that was going to happen, but we haven’t seen it happen yet,” Monti said. “I’m not sure that means it’s not going to happen in 2022 or 2023 when everyone is back to the office and those millennials in the suburbs are driving downtown and their commute is 1½ or 2½ hours a day, and they reach out to managers saying, ‘I have to work from home unless we have a suburban office.’ I can see that happening in the future, but we haven’t seen it yet.” On the bright side for landlords, companies signed 40 new and renewed leases during the second quarter, up from 38 during the first three months of the year, according to JLL. Lakeshore Recycling Services and Oak Street Health inked deals totaling almost 90,000 square

feet in Rosemont and Downers Grove, respectively, and Platinum Home Mortgage signed a 12-year lease for 22,000 square feet at Bell Works Chicagoland, becoming the first tenant to sign a long-term deal at the overhauled former AT&T campus in Hoffman Estates. Monti said newer buildings with more up-to-date amenities are winning the early deals as activity picks up, a product of companies trying to lure employees back to the office who are settled into their work-from-home routine. “If you go to a building that has nice amenities like a gym and a golf simulator, it gets people excited,” he said. More landlords have also recently put their properties up for sale with leasing activity gaining momentum. Those testing investor sentiment about the suburban office market recovery include

separate owners of two properties in the Highland Landmark and Corridors office parks in Downers Grove, Evanston MetroCenter, Edens Corporate Center in Northbrook and Corporate 500 in Deerfield—best known as Caterpillar’s headquarters—which stands to be the priciest suburban Chicago office property to trade since 2005. In one of the few suburban office properties to change hands since the pandemic began, Denver-based KORE Investments in June paid $6.8 million for the mostly vacant Rosemont Corporate Center at 9501 Technology Blvd. near O’Hare International Airport. The four-story building was previously home to Cisco Systems’ Chicago-area office until the IT giant moved its local employees last summer to the redeveloped Old Post Office downtown.

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8 August 2, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

With new funding, Chicago nonprofit expands loan sizes BY KATHERINE DAVIS With the help of additional investments from institutional banks, a Chicago nonprofit lender that focuses on supporting Blackowned small businesses is expanding the size of its loans. The Chicago Neighborhood Initiative Micro Finance Group, which also announced July 29 that it’s changing its name to Greenwood Archer Capital, has raised nearly $8 million over the last 18 months, allowing it to double its loan capacity from $100,000 to $200,000, according to the organization’s president, Erica King. Institutional banks such as Wells Fargo, PayPal, SC Johnson, U.S. Bank and PNC invested in the nonprofit. The nonprofit specifically serves Black-owned small businesses that

have either been denied or don’t have access to commercial investments because the loans are too small or because the companies lack sufficient collateral or adequate credit scores. “Quite a few foundations and banking institutions really doubled down their investment into our organization, especially during COVID and during the civil unrest that was caused by the murder of George Floyd,” said King, who appeared on Crain’s 2020 Notable Minorities in Commercial Banking list. “We’ve always attracted capital, but I think the pandemic really highlighted a lot of the disparities that exist.” The organization said it changed its name to Greenwood Archer Capital to pay homage to what is known as Black Wall Street, a

prosperous and thriving Black community in Tulsa, Okla., in the early 20th century. The business community, which was massacred and destroyed in 1921, sat near the intersection of Greenwood Avenue and Archer Street. “We see our work as being rooted in the growth of small and Black businesses, so we wanted to make sure that we deepened our commitment and picked a name that really spoke to the work that we have been doing historically and the work that we want to continue to do,” King said.

NEW LOANS

The new, larger loans are designed for small-business owners to purchase commercial real estate for their ventures, King said. The loans won’t require down pay-

GREENWOOD ARCHER CAPITAL

The Chicago Neighborhood Initiative Micro Finance Group, now known as Greenwood Archer Capital, says it has doubled its loan capacity from $100,000 to $200,000

Erica King, president of Greenwood Archer Capital. ments, and interest rates will be as low as 3 percent. Since its inception in 2012, Greenwood Archer Capital says it has deployed nearly $18 million in loans and grants to more than 1,600 small businesses. About 90 percent of its loans and financial services have been given to minority entrepreneurs. The nonprofit serves businesses across industries in the Chicago area but has also done deals with

companies in Normal and northwest Indiana, King said. Greenwood Archer Capital sources companies to lend to through an application on its website but also finds companies through events and workshops it hosts and partnerships with accountants and banks. “We know what the barriers are with folks getting access to capital and this is why we exist—to break down those barriers,” King said.

Origin Investments wants to build more apartment buildings in opportunity zones. But not in Chicago. BY DANNY ECKER After raising more than a quarter of a billion dollars to deploy into blighted neighborhoods nationwide, a Chicago real estate firm is aiming to pull more than that into a similar new fund—but doesn’t plan on spending it locally. Origin Investments said it recently closed its first Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund, which at $265 million now stands among the largest such funds in the U.S. meant to capitalize on the federal opportunity zones program. The program, launched in 2017, is designed to spur development in poorer communities across the country by allowing investors to defer paying taxes on capital gains if they redirect those profits into one of thousands of designated blighted areas, known as opportunity zones. Origin launched its first QOZ fund in 2018 and has committed $100 million of the $265 million it raised to five apartment projects, including one recently completed in Pilsen. Origin plans to use the remaining money from the first fund for another four or five multifamily projects and has already lined up $130 million in equity commitments from other investors for opportunity zone projects it will pursue using its second fund, said Origin Co-CEO Michael Episcope. “If you like real estate right now as an asset class and you have capital gains, there’s nothing that comes close to investing in a QOZ fund because of the after-tax benefit,” Episcope said. “The amount

P008_CCB_20210802.indd 8

of people looking for a QOZ fund is so much more today than it was a few years ago.” Investors as of April had pumped more than $16.3 billion into QOZ funds nationwide, according to data tracked by San Francisco-based tax advisory and consulting firm Novogradac. That’s a sharp increase from the $790 million raised by such funds two years before, Novogradac research shows, a boost likely driven by tax benefits that wane the longer an investor waits to put capital gains into a fund. Investment in QOZ funds has also grown as investors seek tax shelters amid expectations of higher taxes on the horizon under the Biden administration, Episcope said.

LARGE FUNDS

Origin’s first fund is among the top 2 percent largest QOZ funds nationwide, according to Novogradac data, and Episcope said the second fund will target around $300 million. Chicago is also home to another one of the largest QOZ funds, which was launched by Chicago real estate investor Larry Levy and Cresset Capital Management and closed a $465 million fund for opportunity zones just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Episcope said he considers the Pilsen project—a $65 million, 202-unit complex called “the Rosie” that it developed along Blue Island Avenue and 15th Street in partnership with Chicago apartment developer Cedar Street—an early success for Origin, having leased more than a quarter of the units since it opened in the spring.

But the development was one Origin would likely have backed even without the opportunity zone benefit, Episcope said, and the firm is pursuing projects in other fast-growing markets—not in Chicago—where opportunity zones are in more up-and-coming neighborhoods with fewer regulatory obstacles for apartment projects. “We can’t make deals pencil (out) here between taxes and the affordable (housing) requirement and the fiscal situation in Chicago and Illinois,” he said, citing the Chicago City Council’s recent move to beef up its ordinance requiring a certain amount of affordable units in new apartment buildings, as well as Cook County’s ongoing reassessment of downtown properties that is likely to put more of the local tax burden on commercial landlords. “It’s hard to make the argument right now to invest here versus places like Nashville or Raleigh or Charlotte or Tampa,” Episcope said. “My heart is here, but my dollars are elsewhere.” That opinion squares with one of the long-standing challenges for Chicago in luring investment into its opportunity zones: There are more attractive projects in other markets, whose opportunity zones are in areas that aren’t suffering from as much disinvestment as those in Chicago. Under criteria determined by each state on where to designate the zones, luxury apartment and condo buildings in downtown Houston and Portland, Ore., are eligible for funds, for example, while Chicago’s zones are mostly located in areas of extreme need. That disparity has been a source of controversy for the entire program, which some critics have called a

ORIGIN INVESTMENTS

Chicago investor raises $265 million, seeking more

Origin Investments and Cedar Street recently completed the Rosie, a 202-unit apartment complex in an opportunity zone in Pilsen. tax dodge that mostly helps projects that don’t need help landing financing. Origin itself is backing opportunity zone projects in Phoenix, Houston, Charlotte and Colorado Springs in areas that are “in transition” from a possibly blighted past, Episcope said.

CHICAGO ZONES

Some high-profile projects have materialized in Chicago opportunity zones, including the pending redevelopment of the former Michael Reese hospital site, a $50 million redevelopment of old warehouses into creative offices called “the Terminal” in Humboldt Park and the $200 million Ogden Commons mixed-use complex in North Lawndale. But a portion of the local opportunity zone investment has been at a smaller level from funds that were meant to back local

businesses or smaller real estate projects, said Robin Schabes, director of the Chicagoland Opportunity Zones Consortium, a charitable foundation-backed group that provides education and other resources to help encourage investment in local opportunity zones. “The trend has been more toward smaller-sized funds,” Schabes said. One example she cites: RiseKit, a startup whose software is meant to help people in underserved communities find jobs, is based out of an office in an opportunity zone on the city’s Near West Side and raised capital last year from College Park, Md.based Verte Opportunity Zone Fund. “If folks only think about (larger) funds . . . we’re missing out on all the diversity of funds in communities and certainly in Chicago,” Schabes said.

7/30/21 3:44 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • August 2, 2021 9

Powerhouse Sidley Austin attorney Howard Trienens dies He was a principal actor in the biggest U.S. corporate restructuring of last century: The Bell telephone breakup BY STEVEN R. STRAHLER Howard Trienens, who built Sidley Austin into a premier law firm and was a principal actor in the biggest U.S. corporate restructuring of the 20th century—the breakup of the Bell telephone system in 1984—died July 26 of natural causes, according to the law firm. He was 97. Trienens also chaired Northwestern University’s board of trustees from 1986 to 1995, backing President Arnold Weber’s effort to wipe out a persistent deficit and Dean Donald Jacobs’ overhaul of NU’s Kellogg School of Management. Trienens was a straight-laced corporate lawyer who seemed to step out of type at least once: when Sidley at his behest hired ex-fugitive Bernardine Dohrn. From 1980 to 1986, he was general counsel of Sidley client AT&T, when the telephone monopoly, under antitrust pressure from the government and competitive pressure from upstart MCI, elected to divest Illinois Bell Telephone and other operating units. “He was able to both synthesize and to separate the legal and business aspects of AT&T’s sundry

problems in Washington, and he sponsored an atmosphere of frank but noncombative debate on the executive floors,” wrote Steve Coll in “The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T.” The 1986 book described Trienens as “serious, reticent, professorial, quiet, controlled.” Trienens had to be talked into going “in-house” at AT&T, according to Sidley colleague Newton Minow, the former Federal Communications Commission chairman, who says he opposed the breakup. Trienens continued to chair Sidley’s executive committee, a post he held from 1977 to 1993, but did not share in fees paid by AT&T, Minow said. He and Trienens had served together as law clerks at midcentury for U.S. Chief Justice Fred Vinson.

MERGER ENGINEER

In 1972 Trienens helped create the modern Sidley when he co-engineered a merger with Minow’s firm, Liebman Williams Bennett Baird & Minow. It was remarkably successful as law firm mergers go. Besides bringing Minow on board, the deal bulked up Sidley’s corporate practice, adding con-

sumer and ad agency clients like Gillette, Lever Brothers and Foote Cone & Belding and a banking team, according to former Howard Trienens partner Thomas Morsch Sr. Sidley’s dominant work had been in trusts and estates for such old-Chicago families as Wrigley and Donnelley, he said. Sidley said Trienens guided the opening of the firm’s New York and Los Angeles offices and forays into Asia-Pacific markets, as well as the development of its Washington, D.C., litigation and regulation practices. He remained a partner until his death and continued until recently to come into the office once a week, according to a colleague. “He didn’t create the D.C. office, but Howard was the one who saw, if we focused our resources on expanding the (regulatory and litigation work), we could have a niche and a competitive advantage,” said Carter Phillips, a former chair of Sidley’s executive committee. The Washington office has expanded to 300 lawyers from the 30 when he joined it in 1984. Among Trienens’ higher-profile

legal cases—one featured by television’s “60 Minutes”—involved the first U.S. dispute to be settled over ownership of Nazi-looted works of art during World War II. Trienens represented pharmaceutical heir Daniel Searle, who in 1987 had purchased Degas’ “Landscape With Smokestacks” for $850,000. He was later sued by descendants of a Dutch couple who had sent the painting to Paris in 1939 before perishing in the Holocaust. The question was whether the painting had been transferred for safekeeping or, in fact, sold legitimately; shortly before the trial was to begin in 1998, Searle

agreed to donate the work, ultimately appraised for $487,500, to the Art Institute of Chicago. Half of the figure went to heirs of the former owners and the same amount to Searle in the form of a tax deduction. NU was running more than $30 million in the red in 1985, when Weber became president, and the law school, Trienens’ alma mater, “lacked rudimentary budget-making,” Weber once recalled. Weber died last year at age 90. Trienens backed Weber’s tough financial love. “I don’t think he gave me three ‘attaboys,’ but he never glared at me,” Weber said in 2013.

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10 August 2, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

EDITORIAL

Great Lakes states must tackle this regional threat together

ALAMY

our tap water has a plastics problem. So does that delicious, locally brewed IPA you’re about to enjoy. And that Lake Superior whitefish you like so much? Yeah, don’t look too closely at that next bite. If you’re consuming something from the Great Lakes, chances are more likely than ever there may be some plastic particle to contend with somewhere along the line. And you thought that cute little beach ball that got away from the beach on Lake Michigan and gently floated away with the current was harmless. Think again. As revealed in a stunning report in this month’s Crain’s Forum on microplastics in the Great Lakes, the latest threat to our great water resource turns out to be something that will not be fixed easily. Because microplastics, less than 5 millimeters in diameter, as writer Eric Freedman points out, get into the water system through so many avenues, understanding where to start is daunting. They are in fibers released during clothes washing; they come from landfills. They originate from plastic bags and cigarette filters. Even abandoned fishing lines are not safe. And our use of plastics that get tossed indiscriminately only increased during the pandemic, putting more particles into play than ever before. On top of that, as Freedman notes, Lake Michigan has more plastic debris than any of the Great Lakes. “Over the past couple of years, there’s

been a lot more debris because of higher water levels eating away at the foredune,’’ said Jim Gallie, superintendent of Ludington State Park on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. “The rising water is exposing a lot of older plastic objects that had been buried in sand for years, even decades.’’ The microplastics issue in the Great Lakes is just the latest assault on a massive freshwater resource that serves as the

source of drinking water for 40 million people in the U.S. and Canada. Climate change, industrial waste and other problems continue to plague the water system as well. Besides the health of the drinking water for so many in the region, the Great Lakes also serve as an economic engine and vital business resource for so many of the region’s aging metropolises. That’s

why a comprehensive, regional-based plan of action is needed now to address the problem of microplastics pollution. Cooperation between the states that hug the shorelines of the lakes has been tepid. And, unfortunately, time is running out to contain and reverse many of the problems, like microplastics, that threaten the future of this great resource. It’s going to take more than a handful of annual beach cleanups to keep dangerous chemicals out of the lakes. Change is coming in small places and serves as a potential roadmap to protecting our resources. According to the Forum, we first need a comprehensive plan to vastly reduce the amount of plastics entering the lakes and the rivers and streams that lead into them. As Freedman reports, one way to do that is to encourage more local governments to act on their own like St. Catharines, Ontario, which banned plastic water bottles and other containers. More impactful may be broader legislation such as a bill recently reintroduced in Congress that would make producers of single-use plastics responsible for collecting and recycling or composting their products after use. That bill faces an uncertain fate, of course, given that similar proposals have failed to pass. It’s time for local, state and federal leaders to wake up and see that the problem goes beyond plastic bags and errant beach balls. Maybe if they understood what was really in their drink, they’d begin to think differently. Cheers to that.

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YOUR VIEW

Wage theft ordinances are only the tip of the iceberg

ments sealed. AT&T, Home Depot, oth the governor and the Verizon Communications, Commayor of Chicago have cast, Lowe’s and Best Buy each had touted what their adminmultiple sealed settlements. It is istrations have done about wage possible to track violators using this theft. violation calculator. Additionally, Governor J.B. Pritzker recentprosecutors are increasingly purly signed a bill into law increassuing employers for crimes against ing penalties for employers who employees. These two include but underpay their workers. Mayor are not limited to wage theft. Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Researchers typically identify City Council were similarly con- Helen LaVan is that the majority of workers earncerned, passing a wage theft or- a professor of dinance for the city of Chicago. management and ing the minimum wage work part time and are younger. However, 34 These enforcements refer to the entrepreneurship minimum wage, which is cur- at DePaul Univer- percent of minimum wage workrently $15 an hour in the city of sity and is a Public ers work full time, and 56.9 percent are over 25. Chicago and $11 per hour else- Voices Fellow A large majority of minimum where in this state. There are ex- through the OpEd wage workers work in leisure and ceptions for workers under age Project. hospitality positions—64.4 per18 and tipped workers. While these increases in the minimum wage and cent. It is no wonder that with reopenings increased enforcement for its payment are resulting from COVID management, companies in the sector are having difficulty commendable, this is only a tiny step. Many reputable, large companies in our obtaining workers. This has resulted in clomidst have been convicted of wage theft. sures, some permanent. Compounding this issue is that a recent These include Walmart, Bank of America and FedEx. Some companies convicted study found that minimum wage workers of wage theft petitioned to keep their settle- cannot afford rent in just about any place

in America. A National Low Income Housing Coalition report showed that a worker would need to earn $21.30 per hour to afford a two-bedroom home at fair market rent. The Illinois affordability statistic is that a household must earn $44,310 annually. More than 7.5 million low-wage workers are housing-burdened nationally, meaning they must pay more than half their income for housing. Moreover, there is an estimate of over 250,000 extreme low rental housing shortages in Illinois. This data was collected before COVID and is higher now. What needs to be done: There are short-, intermediate- and long-run recommendations. In the short run, the city and state should monitor employer violations regarding wage theft of companies with which they do business. Fines paid by violators typically do not help underpaid workers. In the intermediate run, workforce development should upskill minimum wage workers without market skills. Tying housing assistance to upscaling offers improved options for both housing and employment. Displaced workers seeking employment can identify opportunities at the Illinois Department of Employment Security web-

site, Indeed.com or ZipRecruiter.com. There are many open positions with short-term training times, including home health aide, occupational therapist aide, veterinary technician, physical therapist assistant and substance abuse counselor. Truck driving is a similar opportunity. Individuals seeking to upskill can identify training and certifications on the IDES website. Some of these are online and are available at relatively low

MANY REPUTABLE, LARGE COMPANIES IN OUR MIDST HAVE BEEN CONVICTED OF WAGE THEFT. cost. Ideally, this should have been encouraged and facilitated while paycheck protections were in place. One barrier is that, on occasion, workers, especially older workers, view themselves as unemployable when they have not searched correctly enough or intensively enough for a new job. In the long run, housing development should make housing more affordable through multiple levels of cooperation while not disincentivizing private developers.

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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.

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CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • August 2, 2021 11

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Crain’s Chicago Index should be a wake-up call

s the latest Crain’s Chicago Index makes clear, the people of Chicago do not trust Chicago Public Schools to provide the quality education our students need and deserve, especially our Black and Brown students who’ve suffered from years of disinvestment (“Chicago schools a sore spot in the latest Chicago Index survey,” July 22). The survey confirms what other polling has shown over the years: Chicago residents do not trust mayoral control of our school district. As Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS continue to stonewall in negotiations over a safe reopening of schools in the fall, public opinion is unlikely to change anytime soon. With $2 billion in federal rescue money at

their disposal, Lightfoot and her CPS team should be making long-term investments in our city’s neighborhood public schools. Instead, they have made the choice to lay off educators and support staff and leave hundreds of schools without full-time nurses, counselors, case managers or social workers. But now more than ever, our students and their families need schools that are well-resourced and well-staffed with all the tools necessary to meet their social and emotional needs as our collective struggle with COVID-19 continues. Our union has presented CPS a comprehensive reopening proposal that would help families feel confident in sending their children back to school buildings in the fall. That plan calls for an 80 percent vaccination goal

for eligible students; universal mask mandates, which the district has recently adopted; and increased staffing to provide a nurse, social worker, counselor and restorative justice coordinator in every school. CPS and the mayor have rejected virtually all of our proposals. But we continue to push them toward collaboration with us on a road map to rebuild the trust that decades of broken promises and disinvestment in our school communities have sown. Two-thirds of CPS families kept their students learning remotely this winter and spring despite the mayor’s fullcourt press to resume in-person instruction, yet city and school leadership continue to stubbornly insist on heading down the same

troubled path that has destroyed public confidence in our district. Trust and confidence cannot be earned through a press release. The people of Chicago want to see real change in their public schools, and this change should make it clear that the individuals running our school district understand the needs our students and their families have as they try to recover from the pandemic. The Chicago Index results should be a wakeup call to Mayor Lightfoot and spur action to utilize the $2 billion in federal money at her disposal to invest in school communities that have been ignored for generations. JESSE SHARKEY President, Chicago Teachers Union

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12 August 2, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

CRAIN’S LIST

Crain’s latest list of the area’s largest banks features a new name Meanwhile, two familiar brands retain their spots at No. 1 and No. 2 on the list for another year

After the acquisition, Aurora-based Old Second will be the 14th-largest Chicago-area bank by deposits.

Old Second to buy West Suburban Bank

The $297 million deal creates a dominant banking player in the western suburbs BY STEVE DANIELS

Old Second Bank is acquiring the parent of Lombard-based West Suburban Bank in a $297 million deal that will forge a dominant player in Chicago’s western suburbs. The deal, announced July 26, is by far the largest Aurora-based Old Second ever has done and marks a significant turnaround from the aftermath of the financial crisis, when teetering Old Second relied on federal bailout funds to survive and later redeemed those preferred shares held by the Treasury Department at about 35 cents on the dollar. The sale of West Suburban, which at $2.9 billion in assets is the second-largest privately held bank in the Chicago area, will leave just four privately owned local banks with more than $2 billion in assets. At 1.2 times its tangible book value, the price for West Suburban is well below what similar banks have fetched in past dealmaking. Over the past decade, local banks that sold fetched 1.9 times their book value on average, according to an investor presentation by Old Second. But these days acquisitive banks are shying away from the nosebleed prices they used to pay for scale in the nation’s third-largest banking market. Glenview State Bank sold at 1.1 times its book value earlier this year, although in that case the fact that the owners decided not to auction the bank and instead negotiated only with the Champaign-based parent of

P012_CCB_20210802.indd 12

Busey Bank likely kept the price lower than it could have been. By contrast, West Suburban contacted a host of potential buyers. Crain’s reported the bank’s hiring of an investment banker and desire to sell in May. There’s little doubt the surprise merger announced June 1 of Chicago-based First Midwest Bancorp and the Evansville, Ind.-based parent of Old National Bank had something to do with the relatively low price as well. First Midwest, one of the more aggressive bank buyers in the market over the past several years, was a logical match for West Suburban given First Midwest’s small-scale west suburban presence. With First Midwest out of the picture, the kind of bidding war that might have resulted in a higher price for West Suburban apparently didn’t emerge.

SUDDEN GROWTH

For Old Second, the deal makes it a far more meaningful player in suburban Chicago. Adding West Suburban nearly doubles Old Second’s size. The two banks combined have $6.2 billion in assets, $5.3 billion in deposits and more than 70 branches. The deal creates the 14th-largest Chicago-area bank by deposits. Old Second won’t change much in character after the deal. Both banks’ loan portfolios are heavily into commercial real estate. Nearly 40 percent of the combined banks’ $3.4 billion in loans will be in investor-owned commercial real estate, apartment buildings and construction

and development projects, according to the investor presentation. About 30 percent will be to business borrowers, with another 18 percent tied to the value of property owned and occupied by businesses. The deal also makes Old Second a dominant franchise in exurban Chicago. The combined banks will be the second largest by deposits in Kane and Kendall counties. As with most tie-ups between banks in the same market, there will be substantial cost-cutting. Old Second told investors in its presentation that it plans to reduce costs by $20.7 million, equivalent to 37 percent of West Suburban’s nondeposit cost base. That will mean layoffs, as well as branch closings where the two banks overlap. West Suburban employs about 400, according to bank filings. The deal calls for Old Second to pay 65 percent of the purchase price in stock and the rest in cash. It will add three West Suburban directors to its 13-member board, creating one of the larger boards among publicly traded local banks. Old Second CEO James Eccher in a release said, “From our perspective, we do not believe there is another partner who could deliver us the same level of complementary geographic reach, scale on current products and services, upside and long-term shareholder value.” Old Second hopes to secure regulatory approvals and close the transaction by the end of the year.

There’s a newcomer on this year’s list of Chicago’s Largest Banks. First Secure Bank Group comes in at No. 23 after acquiring the parent company of State Bank group and taking on its $260 million in assets. First Secure Bank now has $1.1 billion in combined assets. Northern Trust and BMO Harris Bank hold their respective No. 1 and No. 2 spots. However, CIBC Bank has surpassed the local banks owned by Wintrust Financial and now occupies the No. 3 spot on our list with a 31.4 percent growth in assets from 2019. Cornerstone National Bank & Trust comes in at No. 25 with the largest growth in assets, up 40.8 percent from 2019. Signature Bank bumped its way up from No. 22 to No. 20 with a 39 percent increase in assets. First Bank of Highland Park holds its No. 14 spot with the smallest growth in assets of 2.8 percent. Notably, none of the 25 banks on this year’s list saw a decrease in assets from 2019. Signature Bank saw the largest return on average equity, at 15.8 percent, while Amalgamated Bank of Chicago saw the smallest, at 3.9 percent. This year’s list also ranks the largest thrifts by assets. The Federal Savings Bank has $1.4

ISTOCK

COSTAR

BY SOPHIE RODGERS

None of the 25 institutions on the latest list of the Chicago area’s largest banks saw a decrease in assets from 2019. billion in assets, a whopping 134.8 percent increase from 2019. Most of the thrift’s growth is related to an increased number of loans given during 2020, largely attributable to 1-4 family loans. It is the only thrift on our list to have surpassed the $1 billion mark in assets. Crain’s list of Chicago’s Largest Banks—built with data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence—is ranked by assets as of Dec. 31, 2020. The complete list in Excel is available exclusively to Crain’s Data Members and is available in our Data Center.

Katherine Davis joins Crain’s as breaking news, tech reporter a student at Columbia Katherine Davis has College Chicago. joined Crain’s Chicago Davis is returning Business as a reporter to Crain’s after having covering breaking news served as a research inas well as tech startups, tern while she was still venture capital and the a student at Columentrepreneurial scene. bia College, where she Davis comes to graduated in 2015. Crain’s from the ChiCrain’s hired her again cago Business Journal/ Katherine Davis for a six-month reportChicago Inno, where she had been a reporter and associate ing fellowship in 2016. “We’re delighted to welcome editor since August 2017. At Chicago Inno, Davis Katherine back to our newsroom,” contributed weekly to WGN said Crain’s Editor Ann Dwyer. “In Chicago Radio, both as a guest on her time at Chicago Inno, she dethe “Wintrust Business Lunch” veloped the kind of beat-reporting and as the host of the “Inno Min- experience that made her an imute.” She also managed Chicago portant player on the tech startup Inno’s social media platforms beat, and we’re hoping that she and regularly planned and orga- and our veteran tech reporter, John Pletz, will team up to provide nized programming for events. Davis has experience covering even more muscular coverage of the health care industry, hav- this key industry for our readers.” Davis is a member of the ing reported for Cardiovascular Business prior to Chicago Inno and National Association of Black having done two internships at Journalists and the Chicago Modern Healthcare while she was Headline Club.

7/30/21 4:06 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • August 2, 2021 13

CRAIN’S LIST CHICAGO’S LARGEST BANKS Ranked by assets. All figures are as of Dec. 31, 2020. Dollar figures are in millions. 2020 rank

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Bank

Assets; % change from 2019

Return on average assets

Return on average equity

Loans to deposits ratio

Commercial loans

Real estate loans

Consumer loans

Other loans

Total loans; Nonperforming % change from 2019 loans; % of assets

NORTHERN TRUST CO. Chicago

$169,571.0 24.8%

0.9%

11.7%

23.1

12.3%

9.1%

1.0%

77.7%

$33,759.7 7.7%

$155.2 0.1%

BMO HARRIS BANK NA1 Chicago

$153,855.0 11.8%

0.6%

5.3%

67.6

41.8%

8.0%

8.1%

42.1%

$87,169.7 -0.6%

$1,374.6 0.9%

CIBC BANK USA Chicago

$44,130.8 31.4%

0.7%

4.2%

74.7

36.0%

25.9%

1.0%

37.1%

$26,207.1 13.6%

$244.1 0.6%

WINTRUST ILLINOIS2 Rosemont

$42,311.6 24.2%

1.0%

9.9%

84.7

46.8%

16.5%

14.7%

22%

$30,022.1 19.6%

$155.9 0.4%

FIRST MIDWEST BANK Chicago

$20,730.8 16.7%

0.7%

5.6%

89.9

30.8%

22.3%

2.8%

44.2%

$14,751.2 14.9%

$143.3 0.7%

BYLINE BANK Chicago

$6,383.7 15.7%

0.7%

5.2%

89.9

40.1%

32.8%

0.1%

27.1%

$4,340.5 14.7%

$43.6 0.7%

FIRST AMERICAN BANK Elk Grove Village

$5,930.4 11.9%

0.6%

8.3%

52.4

32.5%

22.4%

5.1%

40%

$2,364.3 10.7%

$35.0 0.6%

CENTIER BANK Merrillville

$5,684.1 21.1%

1.4%

13.9%

102.1

9.9%

34.9%

7.7%

47.5%

$4,732.6 18.8%

$4.1 0.1%

OLD SECOND NATIONAL BANK Aurora

$3,046.9 15.7%

1.2%

10.2%

79.2

23.4%

43.9%

0.1%

32.6%

$2,034.9 5.4%

$22.6 0.7%

PARKWAY BANK AND TRUST CO. Harwood Heights

$2,869.2 8.7%

1.1%

9.5%

101

20.7%

48.9%

0.04%

30.4%

$2,236.0 9.3%

$69.9 2.4%

WEST SUBURBAN BANK Lombard

$2,752.7 19.5%

0.4%

4.9%

59.8

39.4%

36.8%

0.5%

23.3%

$1,487.3 20.8%

$33.5 1.2%

REPUBLIC BANK OF CHICAGO Oak Brook

$2,317.0 14.9%

1.2%

11.1%

78.7

32.9%

29.3%

0.1%

37.8%

$1,519.9 0.1%

$33.9 1.5%

LAKESIDE BANK Chicago

$2,180.0 16.8%

1.4%

13.7%

10.2%

49.0%

0.01%

40.8%

$1,632.0 4.3%

$15.7 0.7%

FIRST BANK OF HIGHLAND PARK Highland Park

$1,915.6 2.8%

0.4%

4.5%

94.6

47.4%

13.2%

0.1%

39.3%

$1,404.5 -4.6%

$32.5 1.7%

MARQUETTE BANK Orland Park

$1,850.6 14.3%

0.7%

6.5%

78.7

1.9%

23.6%

0.02%

74.5%

$1,224.7 1.9%

$23.7 1.3%

BANKFINANCIAL NA Olympia Fields

$1,596.3 7.4%

0.7%

6.5%

71.5

40.1%

10.7%

0.2%

49%

$1,010.3 -14.1%

$1.2 0.1%

PEOPLES BANK Munster

$1,495.3 12.7%

1.1%

11.2%

16.1%

30.5%

3.2%

50.2%

$966.6 6.6%

$15.7 1.0%

GLENVIEW STATE BANK Glenview

$1,457.4 12.2%

0.9%

7.0%

37.8

20.3%

9.3%

35.9%

34.5%

$475.2 -0.0%

$4.3 0.3%

INLAND BANK AND TRUST Oak Brook

$1,288.2 14.7%

1.2%

9.6%

81.9

10.3%

45.9%

0.1%

43.7%

$841.3 5.3%

$17.3 1.3%

SIGNATURE BANK Rosemont

$1,270.5 39.0%

1.5%

15.8%

84.2

57.4%

29.9%

0.03%

12.7%

$962.9 37.6%

$10.4 0.8%

EVERGREEN BANK GROUP Oak Brook

$1,243.2 12.3%

1.1%

10.5%

94.5

4.8%

17.1%

64.4%

13.7%

$994.2 10.7%

$2.3 0.2%

PROVIDENCE BANK & TRUST South Holland

$1,219.2 19.5%

1.1%

9.8%

80.2

26.5%

37.7%

0.04%

35.8%

$843.5 11.1%

$5.2 0.4%

New

FIRST SECURE BANK GROUP3 Sugar Grove

$1,096.0 39.2%

0.5%

5.1%

90.8

36.3%

34.9%

2.0%

26.8%

$790.2 45.0%

$9.9 0.9%

AMALGAMATED BANK OF CHICAGO Chicago

$1,082.4 16.3%

0.4%

3.9%

52.9

2.7%

43.1%

6.5%

47.7%

$513.4 3.0%

$1.1 0.1%

CORNERSTONE NATIONAL BANK & TRUST CO. Palatine

$889.1 40.8%

1.1%

13.8%

77.8

40.2%

39.5%

0.3%

20%

$595.1 26.4%

$5.0 0.6%

Includes banks with headquarters in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake (Ill.), Lake (Ind.), McHenry and Will counties, and reporting assets to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. “Commercial loans” includes secured and unsecured loans for commercial and industrial purposes; domestic only. “Real estate loans” includes only domestic nonfarm and nonresidential loans. “Consumer loans” includes unsecured domestic loans to individuals. Sum of loan types may not equal 100% because of rounding. “Total loans” includes domestic and foreign loans. 1. Includes figures for BMO Harris Bank NA and BMO Harris Central NA. 2. Includes figures for Wintrust Bank, Lake Forest Bank & Trust Co., Northbrook Bank & Trust Co., Hinsdale Bank & Trust Co., Barrington Bank & Trust Co. NA, Wheaton Bank & Trust Co., Libertyville Bank & Trust Co., Old Plank Trail Community Bank NA, Village Bank & Trust, Beverly Bank & Trust Co. NA, St. Charles Bank & Trust Co., State Bank of the Lakes, Schaumburg Bank & Trust Co. NA, and Crystal Lake Bank & Trust Co. NA. 3. Includes figures from State Bank, First Secure Community Bank and First Secure Bank and Trust Co. Data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence

LARGEST THRIFTS RANKED BY TOTAL ASSETS AS OF DEC. 31, 2020 The Federal Savings Bank (Chicago) Liberty Bank for Savings (Chicago) First Savings Bank of Hegewisch (Chicago) Lisle Savings Bank (Lisle) Hoyne Savings Bank (Chicago) Royal Savings Bank (Chicago) Community Savings Bank (Chicago) McHenry Savings Bank (McHenry) North Shore Trust and Savings (Waukegan) Central Federal Savings and Loan Association (Cicero) Midland Federal Savings and Loan Association (Bridgeview) Central Savings, F.S.B. (Chicago) GN Bank (Chicago) Mutual Federal Bank (Chicago) Pulaski Savings Bank (Chicago) North Side Federal Savings and Loan Association of Chicago (Chicago) United Trust Bank (Palos Heights)

$880.1 million $746.5 million $594.2 million $526.9 million $516.4 million $433.3 million $260.4 million $242.2 million $196.2 million $123.5 million $117.9 million $99.7 million $88.5 million $50.1 million $49.5 million $39.2 million

Percentage change from 2019

$1.4 billion

134.8% 4.2% 9.9% 17.7% 18.3% 27.6% 7.0% 14.8% 2.9% 3.9% 6.5% 9.4% -27.2% 24.9% 8.0% 20.5% 50.0%

Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence

P013_CCB_20210802.indd 13

7/27/21 3:58 PM

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 / ADVISORY CONSULTING

CONSTRUCTION

FINANCIAL SERVICES

LAW

NON-PROFIT

MichaelSilver, Deerfield

Skender, Chicago

LGIM America, Chicago

Much Shelist, Chicago

MichaelSilver announces the appointment of Katy Giesecke, CPA, as Partner. She has over 26 years of experience in tax planning, compliance, and assurance services with a focus on trusts and estates. Katy works with high-net-worth individuals, multi-generational family groups, private foundations and charities, and privately held businesses/owners to help them navigate the complexities of estate and income tax matters. Katy consistently provides impactful client service and team leadership.

Skender, one of the nation’s top building contractors, congratulates Kevin Chan on his promotion to Senior Project Manager. Kevin joined Skender in 2015 and has more than 10 years of experience in the construction industry. As Senior Project Manager, Kevin is responsible for delivering projects on schedule, maximizing productivity and efficiency, and controlling project costs for the firm’s healthcare clients.

LGIM America (LGIMA) is pleased to announce that Catherine Stadtler has joined the firm as a Defined Contribution Marketing Strategist. In this role, she is responsible for setting content strategy and executing all defined contribution marketing initiatives, including collateral development, distribution strategies and product execution for the US Defined Contribution team. Catherine has more than 25 years of marketing experience within the financial services/defined contribution industry.

Sheryl Jaffee Halpern has been elected to Much’s Management Committee. Sheryl is a trusted leader who fosters Much’s inclusive culture. She leads professional development initiatives, including skill-building training and mentoring programs. Chair of the firm’s Labor & Employment group, Sheryl provides employers with guidance on virtually every decision they face, devising practical solutions for complicated legal and business problems.

Avenues to Independence, Park Ridge

LAW

CONSTRUCTION Executive Construction, Chicago Executive Construction is proud to announce the promotion of Bryan Morris to Project Executive. In his 10-year career, following his service in the Marine Corps, he has amassed a portfolio of interiors spaces and national ground-up builds. With a military background that supports the firm’s clear operational processes, his current collaborations include multiple complex renovations in Willis Tower. Internally, Bryan is a leader in talent development to recruit and mentor emerging professionals.

CONSTRUCTION

Much Shelist, Chicago

Skender, Chicago

Courtney Mayster has been elected to Much’s Management Committee. A longtime leader at Much, Courtney embodies the firm’s entrepreneurial spirit, leading efforts to implement new technologies and client service initiatives. As Much’s Marketing Partner, she champions projects that drive strategic growth. Courtney serves as chair of the firm’s Real Estate group, and in her practice, she guides lenders, property owners, and investors through complex commercial real estate projects.

Skender, one of the nation’s top building contractors, congratulates Ryan Cotter on his promotion to Senior Preconstruction Manager. Ryan joined Skender in 2016 and has over 10 years of industry experience. As Preconstruction Manager, Ryan aligns internal teams with client goals to support project budgeting, bidding, scheduling, constructability, logistics and value analysis. He efficiently and reliably guides our commercial projects through the planning, design and construction phases.

LAW Freeborn & Peters LLP, Chicago Freeborn welcomes Amanda C. Andrews to the firm’s Chicago office as an associate in the Corporate Practice Group and Trust and Estates team. She has experience representing ultra-high-net-worth multinational individuals, families, closely-held businesses, private foundations, private trust companies and family offices, providing them with tax and estate planning services. Amanda advises clients on tax and legal matters related to charitable planning, personal and business holdings, and more.

CONSTRUCTION

Executive Construction, Chicago

Skender, Chicago

LAW

Executive Construction is proud to announce the promotion of Nick Udchitz to Senior Superintendent. A critical field leader on the firm’s most notable interiors engagements in recent years, he’s collaborated on over 1.4-million sf of corporate headquarters for CDW, CNA, Central States Health Fund, McDonald’s, and Northern Trust. Nick’s teamwork and integrity have earned the respect of peers, partners, and clients. OSHA 145Hour Certified, his attention to detail ensures work is executed safely.

Skender, one of the nation’s top building contractors, congratulates Jason Utah on his promotion to Senior Project Manager. Jason joined Skender in 2016 and has 15 years of experience in the construction industry. As Senior Project Manager, Jason is responsible for delivering projects on schedule, maximizing productivity and efficiency, and controlling project costs for Skender’s healthcare and lab sciences clients.

Freeborn & Peters LLP, Chicago

CONSTRUCTION

CONSULTING

Northern Builders, Inc., Schiller Park

Kearney, Chicago

LAW

Bill Duffy has been hired as a Vice President in Kearney’s Strategic Operations practice. His nearly thirty years of global manufacturing and supply chain experience include top positions with West Monroe Partners, Evolve Partners, BearingPoint, and many more. Bill’s knowledge of strategy, business transformation, and M&A transactions, as well as his handson style, will contribute to growing collaboration and innovation within the Strategic Operations practice.

Freeborn & Peters LLP, Chicago

Northern Builders, Inc. is pleased to announce the promotion of Cory E. Grusecki to Vice President of Real Estate. As the executive in charge of Northern’s real estate portfolio, Cory demonstrates positive and effective oversight of the firm’s leasing, broker relations, property management, and tenant retention efforts. Cory has been a valuable member of the Northern team since 2007.

P014_CCB_20210802_v1_test.indd 1

Freeborn & Peters LLP welcomes Jerome R. Crabtree to the firm’s Chicago office as an attorney in the Corporate Practice Group and Trust and Estates team. Jerome has experience counseling clients on entity formation, corporate structure, and other corporate governance matters. Prior to joining Freeborn, Jerome was an Associate at Ziliak Law, where he represented several funds launching and doing business in a variety of states, drafted business plans, employee handbooks, and more.

NON-PROFIT American Cancer Society, Chicago Nykia Wright is CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, & is a recognized leader in the journalism industry. She is responsible for managing significant disruption, driving change, & implementing Wright the company’s digital transformation. Nykia is excited to join ACS to bring the conversation of health equity in the open in a way that is respectful of peoples’ fears & helpful in finding a path towards a cure. Tinney Dan Tinney has also joined the American Cancer Society Illinois Area Board. Dan has been with PepsiCo since 1999, and he is currently CFO of Quaker Foods North America for the company. Dan is eager to support the American Cancer Society’s mission to save lives, celebrate lives, and lead the fight for a world without cancer in memory of his mother. NON-PROFIT

Freeborn & Peters LLP welcomes Robert A. Sikorski to the firm’s Chicago office as an associate in the Corporate Practice Group. Robert provides strategic and informed business legal advice to companies throughout their life cycles. He advises lenders, borrowers, lessors, and other stakeholders on protecting their property interests in aviation and railcar assets, including UCC, Surface Transportation Board, and Cape Town Convention filings.

AMITA Alexian Brothers Medical Center, Chicago Dia Nichols has joined the American Cancer Society Illinois Area Board. Dia has served as President and CEO at AMITA Alexian Brothers Medical Center since 2019. During his tenure, Alexian Brothers has become a CMS 5-star organization, as well as being named to the Top 50 hospitals list by Healthgrades. For the American Cancer Society, he has taken on leadership roles at Relay for Life events and he looks forward to helping the American Cancer Society continue its important mission.

Avenues to Independence, a nonprofit agency that supports adults with developmental disabilities in the Greater Chicagoland area, are pleased to announce that Jason Clark Clark has been named President /CEO. Jason has 20 years of experience in the development disabilities field. In addition, Shawna Egan has been named as Vice President of Development. Shawna has 30 years of experience serving the Egan developmental disability community. Shawna will lead all aspects of Fund Development for Avenues, including corporate and planned giving, special events, fundraising and major gift initiatives. Jason and Shawna are both passionate about empowering individuals with disabilities to lead the lives they choose with independence and dignity.

TECHNOLOGY Discovery Partners Institute, Chicago Discovery Partners Institute (DPI) is pleased to announce that Dr. Danielle Clark and Laura Clements have joined the DPI team. Dr. Danielle Clark serves as Clark the Associate Director for Pritzker Tech Talent Labs at DPI. In her role, she provides intellectual, strategic, and visionary leadership for DPI’s talent enterprise which spans immersion, undergraduate/graduate programs, workforce Clements development, and lifelong learning. Laura joins as a Visiting Senior Project Manager for the IDPH Wastewater Project.

WEALTH MANAGEMENT J.P. Morgan Private Bank, Chicago Johnathan Hirsh has joined J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Chicago as an Executive Director and Banker. In this role, John provides guidance around the financial challenges of significant wealth, working with affluent individuals, entrepreneurs, real estate families and tech founders across investments, lending, banking and estate planning. With more than 20 years in private wealth management, he was most recently with Deutsche Bank and previously spent 16 years with U.S. Trust, Bank of America.

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

7/27/21 2:12 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • AUGUST 2, 2021 15

WHAT’S THE SOLUTION? Dealing with plastic in the Great Lakes won’t be easy. PAGE 16 RAW MATERIALS: Legislators look to reduce flow of tiny plastic pellets into water. PAGE 17

GREAT LAKES POLLUTION

BIG BRANDS: Shareholders add pressure on consumer products to reduce plastic use. PAGE 22

STEPHEN J. SERIO

SWIMMING IN PLASTIC They’re in your microbrew. They’re in your tap water. They end up in the bellies of your lake trout. They get between your toes as you scramble up and slide down shoreline dunes. They’re microplastics. They are getting into your body. And they’re coming from a source that’s a lot closer to home than you think. We’ve all seen images of floating islands of plastic in the Caribbean and Pacific. What most of us have managed to avoid thinking about, however, is this: Plastic waste also is a serious problem in the Great Lakes Basin, the source of drinking water for 40

This Crain’s Forum on the emerging threat of microplastics pollution in the Great Lakes is a joint project of the newsrooms of Crain’s Chicago Business and Crain’s Detroit Business.

million people in the U.S. and Canada. “In the mid-1900s, plastic became an integral component of human cultures and commerce globally” and accounted for 50 to 80 percent of waste on beaches and in the ocean, according to a study of microplastics in fish. The long life and durability of plastics make them useful for consumers, but the slow rate at which

they degrade also means their adverse environmental effects are long-lasting. Plastics don’t dissolve easily in water and can absorb nasty chemicals from the environment, some of them toxic or carcinogenic. They absorb bacteria and metals, can be toxic to human cells, transport invasive species, block animals’ digestive tracts and reduce the ability of wildlife to forage for food. That’s why microplastics, which are less than 5 millimeters or 0.2 inches in diameter, are considered a contaminant of emerging concern.

See PLASTICS on Page 20

SHERRI MASON/PENN STATE BEHREND

Great Lakes microplastics pollution is showing up in fish, birds—and your beer glass | BY ERIC FREEDMAN

Microplastics, which are less than 5 millimeters or 0.2 inches in diameter, are considered an emerging contaminant in the Great Lakes.

JIM KIRK PUBLISHER • ANN DWYER EDITOR • CASSANDRA WEST FORUM EDITOR • THOMAS J. LINDEN CREATIVE DIRECTOR • JASON McGREGOR DIGITAL DESIGN DIRECTOR • KAREN FREESE ZANE ASSOCIATE CREATIVE DIRECTOR • SCOTT WILLIAMS COPY CHIEF

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7/30/21 1:50 PM

16 August 2, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

PHOTOS BY STEPHEN J. SERIO

Reducing plastic pollution won’t be easy Keeping plastic out of the lakes in the first place is easier than cleaning out what’s already there

sites have been dropped from the list, with a ninth, northeast Ohio’s An estimated 22 million pounds Ashtabula River that flows into Lake of plastic pollute the Great Lakes anErie, recently proposed for delisting. nually, adding to the tons of plastic Similarly, sea lampreys invaded waste already in the water and sedlakes Huron, Michigan and Superior iment that threatens the health of in the 1930s, outcompeting native fish, wildlife and humans alike. species like lake trout. Nine decades So what’s to be done? later, scientists are still seeking the When it comes to solutions, there best way to control them, and the are actually two major problems: reGreat Lakes Fishery Commission ducing the influx of plastics into the concedes that “total elimination of lakes and handling the microplassea lamprey populations from the tics already there. Great Lakes is unlikely.” “Once it’s in the lakes, it’s exThe first challenge is slashing tremely difficult to get it out,” said the amount of plastics entering the Jennifer Caddick, vice president of lakes and tributaries. communication and engagement at Part of the answer is encouragthe Chicago-based Alliance for the ing local governments to act on Great Lakes, which organizes beach their own turf, as is happening in cleanups along the shorelines of all St. Catharines, Ontario, which has five Great Lakes. banned plastic water bottles and Past efforts to address environis phasing out other plastic beverage containers at facilities. WHEN IT COMES TO SOLUTIONS, THERE city-owned The Lake Ontario city ARE ACTUALLY TWO MAJOR PROBLEMS. about 10 miles northwest of Niagara Falls mental messes in the Great Lakes also banned plastic straws and eathighlight how effective solutions ing utensils at its facilities, including to both problems will be costly, a hockey arena, and requires biodetime-consuming, scientifically chalgradable plates and utensils at festilenging and sometimes politically vals in city park. contentious. “We can be on the leading edge, For example, the 1972 U.S.-Cathe front end,” said Walter Sendzik, nadian Great Lakes Water Quality the St. Catharines, Ontario, mayor Agreement designated 43 heavily who chairs the Great Lakes and St. contaminated areas of concern as Lawrence Cities Initiative, a coalipriorities for environmental cleantion of 131 U.S. and Canadian mayup. Almost 50 years and billions ors and local officials. of dollars later, only eight of those “We’re the closest to the shore-

BY ERIC FREEDMAN

Packaging litter breaks down in the lakes into smaller and smaller pieces that are then ingested by fish and other wildlife. line, we’re the closest to the water source,” Sendzik said of Great Lakes communities. State, provincial and federal governments have more regulatory authority, “but their proximity to the actual issues is one, two, three, four steps removed,” he said. State and provincial governments could take broader regulatory measures to discourage use and disposal of plastic products that may end up in the lakes. Eight states—including New York in the Great Lakes region—have enacted some form of restrictions on single-use plastic bags, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In the Chicago City Council, there’s a proposed ordinance to prohibit restaurants from using plastic clamshells, bowls, plates, trays, cups and cartons and allowing them to give patrons plastic utensils or straws only upon request.

In April, Michigan state Sen. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, introduced a bill that would give localities the option of banning, taxing or imposing fees on single-use plastic bags. It would repeal a 2016 “ban the ban” law, championed by the restaurant industry and other retailers, that prohibits local governments from imposing such restrictions. “Other communities have shown success in keeping trash off their roads, beautifying their communities and keeping this trash out of their rivers and streams by introducing limits, deposits or other creative ideas to improve plastic bag recycling,” Irwin said in a statement. Odds of Irwin’s bill passing in the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature are slim, however. Past national actions on both sides of the border have helped. In 2015, Congress banned the manufacture, packaging and distribution of personal care items and

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toiletries containing plastic microbeads such as facial scrubs and toothpastes. The Canadian government followed suit in 2018. Both national governments acted after lobbying by mayors citing scientific findings and environmentalists’ concerns, Sendzik said. “It’s a really good example of how the political will of mayors can change the course of something as important as taking out a product proven detrimental to our waterways,” he said. Recently reintroduced legislation in Congress would hold producers of packaging, single-use products, beverage containers and food service products financially responsible to collect, manage and recycle or compost the products after consumer use. Dubbed the “Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act of 2021,” it would phase out some single-use products such as plastic utensils, establish beverage container deposit programs and increase the percentage of recycled content required in beverage containers. Congress has failed to act on similar legislation in the past. Environmental groups have urged policymakers to take a broader approach to curbing plastics in consumer products instead of letting a smattering of communities enact bans on certain types of plastic products. “We need to move away from this whack-a-mole approach to dealing with one problem at a time—a plastic bag ban or a plastic straw ban, the item of the moment,” said Caddick at the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

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Durbin bill targets plastic pellet polluters

PHOTOS BY STEPHEN J. SERIO

McDonald’s straws and Dart Container’s plastic cups aren’t the only petroleum-based materials winding up in the sediment of Great Lakes beaches and the stomachs of fish and waterfowl. Some plastic doesn’t even get to its intended use. The tiny preproduction plastic pellets—known as nurdles, roughly the size of rice grains and used in manufacturing those consumer products— are commonly found in the lakes. That’s drawn the attention of environmental groups and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who is leading an effort in Congress to make the EPA prohibit plastic manufacturers from discharging plastic pellets into lakes, rivers and streams. Durbin’s bill would empower the EPA to set regulations and penalties. Because of how small the pellets are, where they came from before ending up in the lakes is impossible to track, unlike a distinctive red Solo cup made by Mason, Mich.-based Dart. But scientists who have studied plastic pellet pollution in the Great Lakes say the pellets typically originate from a plastics refinery, manufactur-

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CAROLINE SEIDEL/PLASTICS NEWS

BY CHAD LIVENGOOD

Preproduction plastic pellets are used for injection molding. ing plant or somewhere in the transportation between the two facilities. The pellets may be spilled on site and get washed into a drain basin, eventually making their way into the streams, rivers and lakes that feed lakes Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, St. Clair and Superior, said Sherri Mason, sustainability coordinator at Penn State Behrend whose research focuses on Great Lakes plastic pollution. In Erie, Pa., alone, there are a dozen manufacturers that get resin pellets shipped in by train cars, Mason said. “Along the way, as they’re transferred from one container to another, these pellets get lost,” she said.

Mason said she has found plastic pellets in the parking lot of Presque Isle, a Pennsylvania state park on a peninsula that juts out into Lake Erie. “Why the heck are they in a parking lot at Presque Isle?” Mason asked. “They probably got washed from the lake during a storm surge . . . into the parking lot. It’s crazy.” Legislation seeking to impose some regulations and penalties on plastics producers for polluting freshwaters with plastic pellets is starting to gain steam in Congress. The $715 billion infrastructure bill that the U.S. House passed on July 1 includes language requiring the EPA

to write national rules prohibiting the discharge of plastic pellets—mirroring Durbin’s Plastic Pellet Free Waters Act in the Senate. “The Plastic Pellet Free Waters Act is an important step in addressing the plastic problem that is plaguing our beloved Lake Michigan and the first of several steps I plan to take this year to improve the Great Lakes and the surrounding communities,” Durbin said in a statement. The Plastics Industry Association opposes Durbin’s bill. “We are concerned that, as written, a provision within this legislation opens the door to regulatory overreach that could subject countless small plastics operations across America to heavy-handed federal enforcement,” said George O’Connor, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based trade group. The association’s members have a 30-year-old voluntary program to prevent pellet pollution called “Operation Clean Sweep” that promotes best “housekeeping” practices in containing resin pellets, flakes and powders from escaping during refining, transportation and manufacturing. “Plastic is an essential material, and we completely agree that it doesn’t belong in the environment,” O’Connor

said. “We look forward to continuing to work with lawmakers and regulators on reasonable solutions to reduce the issue of pellet loss.” Another piece of legislation also has drawn the ire of plastics manufacturers in Michigan. A California congressman is sponsoring a bill in the House called the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act that would require manufacturers to manage recycling of single-use plastic containers, tax plastic bags and expanded polystyrene or foam food containers nationally, as well as set up a national bottle bill similar to Michigan’s 10-cent deposit per container. Dow CEO Jim Fitterling, who chairs the American Chemistry Council, has spoken out against the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act because it would halt construction of new virgin plastic plants for up to three years, Plastics News reported. “It would prevent advanced recycling technologies that can dramatically expand the types and amounts of plastics that can be recycled,” Fitterling said at the time. “Under the Act, these facilities are subject to a pause. We need to accelerate, not pause, progress on these important recycling innovations.”

The Great Lakes — a fifth of the world’s fresh water.

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18 August 2, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

HOLISTIC SOLUTIONS NEEDED

‘Whack-a-mole’ isn’t working to keep lakes clean Y

ou might not imagine a These microplastics are often intrash cleanup as a joyous visible but are a clear and present occasion. danger to wildlife, which mistake But the Alliance for the Great them for food, and to humans, too. Lakes’ Adopt-a-Beach events are Microplastics have been found in filled with fun and laughter, built drinking water, bottled water and on a shared vision of a clean, beer, and it’s estimated that we healthy Great Lakes region for all each ingest about a credit cardto enjoy. sized amount of plastic each week. Each year, about 15,000 volunVolunteer cleanups alone cannot Jennifer Caddick teers from all walks of life join one solve the Great Lakes plastic polluof over 1,000 beach cleanup events is vice president of tion problem. While Adopt-a-Beach held across all five Great Lakes and communications volunteers pick up about 50,000 and engagement at pounds of litter each year, that all eight Great Lakes states. the Chicago-based Adopt-a-Beach volunteers do pales in comparison with the estiAlliance for the more than just clean up beaches mated 22 million pounds of plastic Great Lakes. and keep litter out of the lakes. that enter the Great Lakes annually, They also collect data. contaminating the ecosystem and a Every item picked up, from cigarette butts key drinking water source for 40 million Amerto single-use water bottles and bits of plastic icans and Canadians. foam containers, is meticulously tallied by volAnd yet despite the scope of the problem, unteers and entered into our online database. reducing plastic is frequently dismissed as a And that’s when things get interesting. “feel-good” issue. This data represents a powerful snapshot of We tend to get preoccupied, focusing solely exactly what kind of litter ends up in our lakes. on eliminating the “bad guy” of the moYear after year, the numbers are roughly the ment—for a while it was plastic bags and then same: Approximately 85 percent of the trash balloons. cleaned up by Adopt-a-Beach volunteers is While these are noble efforts and come from made up wholly, or in part, of plastic. a positive desire to limit the amount of plastic The insidious thing about plastic is that it being produced before it can even enter the never really goes away. waste stream, this approach puts us in “whackSun, waves and other environmental factors a-mole” mode. will only break down plastic left on the beach And that’s not a particularly effective stratinto smaller and smaller pieces. egy when you think about the thousands of

different plastic items we use each day. The responsibility for reducing plastic should be placed on the manufacturers, not individuals or end-user industries like restaurants. To make sure our Great Lakes stay healthy, we need holistic policy solutions—and we’re starting to see a trend in this direction. The Canadian government has banned many single-use plastics, focusing on those most frequently found in the environment and the least recyclable items, with the policy expected to go into effect in late 2021. While not perfect, it is an important start. To be clear, expecting a complete end to all plastic use is not realistic. The COVID-19 pandemic showed the critical importance of plastic in health care, for example, with

disposable gloves, gowns, masks and other medical-use plastics playing a crucial role in keeping health care workers safe and allowing them to provide lifesaving care. However, single-use plastics used for food and packaging are a major source of lake pollution, and cutting them across the board can make a significant dent in the plastic problem. Reducing plastic pollution is not easy. We need creative thinking and a diversity of voices in the policy-making conversation. Statewide bills that prevent local governments from taking action—“bans on bans”—in states like Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, for example, are counterproductive. Blocking local governments from acting while failing to provide holistic solutions at the state level

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driven extended producer responsibility, or EPR, policies, which ensure plastic producers are responsible for pollution they create. In fact, our Great Lakes neighbors in Ontario recently updated their EPR program, which is funded by manufacturers for the proper end-of-life disposal of their products, saving the government an estimated $156 million annually. We in Chicago and Illinois can and should follow these examples and start to advance similar public policies today. Other opportunities to tackle plastic pollution are in the hands of Congress. In the coming weeks, the Senate will take up critical water infrastructure legislation. The House of Representatives recently passed the INVEST in America Act, which includes a package of measures to help keep

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START AT THE SOURCE

Hold plastic producers responsible

reat Lakes neighbors must down into microplastics—tiny get behind U.S. Sen. Dick plastic bits that slip into our drinking Durbin of Illinois and those water and the food chain undetectstates that have taken the lead on ed, causing unforeseen health issues adopting future-focused solutions. for aquatic animals and humans A growing body of research tells alike. The manufacturing of plastic us that plastic pollution impacts us goods is also a major problem. all. But if we shift our approach to Preproduction plastic pellets are this global crisis from reactive to the foundation of plastic mateproactive, we can make a lasting rials. There are no repercussions Andrea Densham impact. To do so, we must adopt to manufacturers or transporters is senior director future-focused solutions that when those pellets leak into our prevent plastic pollution entirely— of government waterways. from production through the entire affairs and conA study published in December servation policy at supply chain. revealed that 42 of 66 beaches Shedd Aquarium in across Great Lakes shorelines conAt least 22 million pounds of Chicago. plastic enter the Great Lakes every tain these pea-size pellets. year, and our plastic reliance only At Shedd Aquarium, we see plastic increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. pellets—and many other types of plastic polluThis increase is costly on many fronts. tion—firsthand on Chicago’s beaches as we work Food packaging alone, according to a new with local volunteers to clean up our shorelines. report, costs the food-service industry an But picking up litter on beaches and on the estimated $24 billion annually. An additional river is a reactive response to the issue. We $6 billion is then spent on waste management must simultaneously pursue forward-thinking to get rid of this disposable plastic. and cost-effective solutions to prevent plastic It is also costly to our health. As plastic items pollution in the first place. make their way into waterways, they break As a founding member of the Aquarium

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Conservation Partnership, Shedd Aquarium and 24 other aquariums across the country have eliminated more than 1 million plastic beverage bottles and counting from our operations as well as reducing single-use plastic packaging wherever possible. We are proof positive that the business model works, and we aren’t the only example. Businesses and city governments across the U.S. have saved $5 billion from avoiding disposables and created 193,000 jobs within the new reuse economy, and restaurants in the Chicago community are actively pursuing plastic solutions through our Let’s Shedd Plastic program. We agree with the city of Chicago’s Waste Strategy report that the most impactful pollution prevention strategies are those that look upstream and encourage source reduction. Smart plastic prevention policies are already moving in cities and states across the country. Virginia’s governor recently signed an executive order to discontinue state agencies from buying, selling or distributing single-use plastic items, while investing in the development of a statewide plastic pollution reduction plan. States like Maine are advancing science-

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INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE

You can’t brew good beer without good water

ur Great Lakes face a Microplastics in our Great Lakes growing number of threats have been detected at high conthat demand urgent action centrations. According to a recent from all of us fortunate enough to survey by the U.S. Geological live in this part of the world. Survey, microplastics have been As a business owner who relies recorded at 112,000 particles per on the purity of Great Lakes water square mile of Great Lakes water. by turning it—and hops, malts Recently, to address our own and other ingredients grown plastic management, Bell’s worked right here in Michigan—into craft with other breweries to secure a Larry Bell is the brews, I take the sustainability of grant to purchase two balers that founder and presiour business practices seriously. allow us to begin recycling bags Whether it’s making energy-ef- dent of Bell’s Brewmade of woven polypropylene that ery and co-chair ficiency improvements or new are used for brewing grains like of the Great Lakes endeavors to address microplasbarley and other ingredients that Business Network. tics, Bell’s Brewery works hard to come in large quantities. minimize our impact on the Great These bags and what are called Lakes. “super sacks” are essentially bulk bags And as a co-chair of the Great Lakes Busithat can hold upward of 3,000 pounds. ness Network—a coalition of businesses that While they are technically recyclable, there advocate for Great Lakes protection—I know wasn’t access to a viable recycling outlet myself and fellow members are invested in until now. addressing our water infrastructure issues Truckloads of these bags are needed to and making the necessary improvements to make it worthwhile for a recycling company ensure pollution, especially plastic pollution, to take them on. Even though we are a larger doesn’t reach our waterways. brewery, Bell’s wasn’t generating enough One issue of concern is the amount of used bags on our own. plastic that is inadvertently released into The balers purchased with the grant for the Great Lakes, degrading into small pieces our brewery and others allow us to use it called “microplastics” that accumulate in for transport, and finished bales are prothe food chain and wreak havoc on natural cessed through a partnership with Padnos systems. in Grand Rapids and their Kalamazoo

A volunteer picks up trash on a Lake Michigan beach in Chicago. is the equivalent of continuing to let plastic flow into our Great Lakes. The Great Lakes region has been home to innovative pollution reduction ideas before. The movement to ban plastic microbeads in personal care products like face washes started with a statewide ban in Illinois, and other Great Lakes states subsequently pursued similar legislation. This pushed federal governments to act, and it is now illegal in the U.S. and Canada to include plastic microbeads in personal care products. The Alliance’s volunteers will keep cleaning our beaches, but they can’t go it alone: We need elected officials at all levels of government to step up and do their part to stop plastic pollution at the source.

‘Bans on bans’ don’t protect Great Lakes

our waterways healthy. Especially important is the inclusion of Durbin’s Plastic Pellet Free Waters Act, which prohibits the discharge of plastic pellets and other preproduction plastic materials from facilities that make, use, package or transport those materials—a solution that Shedd Aquarium is working to advance. We are calling on individuals, business leaders and policymakers to help us prevent microplastics, preproduction plastic pellets and all other forms of plastic pollution. For action items and climate solutions delivered right to your inbox, consider signing up for Surge, a new digital conservation community created by Shedd Aquarium to mobilize the public to protect our shared planet. It’s the direction we must head in collectively today, and there is no time to waste.

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partner AJ’s Recycling Services. Because of our commitment to sustainability, we worked with other breweries to secure this grant, which we are proud to say will reduce the amount of plastics being discarded in our state. We also know it takes more than individual actions of a few businesses to keep our lakes clean. It also takes smart policies at the local, state and federal level to ensure we’re all doing our part. The good news is there are solutions to ensure that microplastics don’t result in a catastrophe for our Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Business Network supports policies that will keep more plastics out of our freshwater ecosystem as well as other policies to keep our lakes clean. There are many other infrastructure investments that are necessary to make changes that reduce or eliminate pollution entering our rivers, lakes and streams. Our Great Lakes are only as great as they can be when we work together to protect them. The Great Lakes Business Network engages in advocacy on several fronts—from mitigating harmful algal blooms, to advancing clean energy opportunities and shuttering Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline—and we look forward to continuing our leadership from an economic perspective as we engage on the issue of microplastics.

BEING LEADERS

GETTY IMAGES

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ore than a plastic pollution enters month into the Great Lakes each summer, year. thousands of people Unfortunately, continue to visit Great plastic doesn’t readily Lakes beaches, dunes, break down; it just gets inland lakes and our smaller, so small that majestic rivers. these tiny particles can Home to more pass through wastewathan 20 percent of the ter treatment and water Sean Hammond, left, is policy director world’s fresh water, filtration technologies. at the Michigan Environmental Council. our Great Lakes are Scientists have docuNicholas Occhipinti is director of part of who we are in mented microplastics in government affairs at the Michigan League Michigan. Great Lakes-area beer, of Conservation Voters. Our enjoyment of drinking water and sea the lakes and our water salt. is what drives us to do our day jobs for the Litter and microplastics do more than Michigan Environmental Council and Michthreaten the beauty of our Great Lakes. They igan League of Conservation Voters, working also have impacts on the wildlife. with stakeholders and lawmakers to develop These plastics are persistent in the envipolicies that ensure we put laws in place that ronment, and when they make their way into ensure we have safe, clean drinking water, pre- the ecosystem, they also end up in the fish serve our land and protect our Great Lakes. we eat and the water we drink. Microplastics One issue that has been less noticed is mipollution is a Great Lakes issue and a potential croplastics pollution. While common litter on health issue that demands more study. our beaches is visible and obvious—like plastic Researchers should continue learning how water bottles, cigarette filters and balloons— plastics both absorb chemicals from the envianother, much smaller form of pollution called ronment and release them upon ingestion; the microplastics might be even more problemwork is needed for the whole range of plastics, atic. from beads and fragments to plastic fibers. Microplastics are small plastic pieces less Beyond research, what can be done? than 5 millimeters in size, some so small they We know the scale of plastic pollution in the are invisible to the naked eye. They come from Great Lakes is bigger than the individual pera variety of sources, including synthetic fibers, son or a single governmental unit, and it will marine debris and larger pieces of land-based take more than volunteer cleanup strategies to litter. Researchers estimate some 11,000 tons of seriously address the issue.

Michigan has led on this issue in the past— tackling pollution through the Bottle Bill 40 years ago and with the new recycling legislation running through the Legislature this term. We can be leaders again by looking at new policies like: w Responsibly upgrading our waste and drinking water treatment systems to treat and filter a variety of contaminants. w Building protections into consumer products, such as microfiber filters on washing machines; designing products for permanent reuse in a circular economy; and extending producer responsibility. (An example of this is legislation recently signed into law in Maine that holds producers responsible for plastic pollution.) w Letting communities lead by removing restrictions on local governments from leading, experimenting and tackling issues on their own—policies like the ban on plastic bag bans. Protecting our Great Lakes is not only about stopping oil spills, reducing runoff that causes toxic algae blooms and reducing contaminants from flowing into our waters. Plastic pollution is a growing problem that must be addressed by our leaders. We proved it could be done in 2015, when states led and the federal government followed with the banning of microbeads. Now, we must take on the whole plastics issue, from milk jugs to microfibers.

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20 August 2, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Continued from Page 15

Microplastics originate from fibers released during clothes washing and from industrial waste, landfills, pollution, spills, synthetic textiles, tires and abrasive cleaning particles. Other sources include fragments of such litter as plastic bags, cigarette filters, Styrofoam containers and abandoned fishing line. Stormwater runoff, treated sewage sludge and effluent from wastewater treatment plants channel them into tributaries that, in turn, feed them into the lakes, where water circulation patterns move them around. Some particles get deposited into lake sediment. Waves move particles to the shore, where winds can disperse them onto land, including onto coastal sand dunes. “It’s inescapable that things are getting worse,” said Sherri Mason, who as a chemistry professor at State University of New York at Fredonia sampled water in all five Great Lakes. Fish studies and cores of lake sediment show an “exponential increase in the amount of microparticles” compared with before 1950, said Mason, who is now the sustainability coordinator at Penn State Behrend. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the problem due to the disposal of plastic gloves, plastic masks and takeout meals packaged in foam plastic, according to Mason, who said that under such dire circumstances, “all of the concerns about plastic pollution go out the window.” Microplastics are appearing in a disturbingly wide range of places in the Great Lakes Basin.

MANY SOURCES OF POLLUTION Lake Michigan has more plastic debris than any of the other Great Lakes, and its west-to-east water currents bring much of the waste eastward from the Chicago area to the lake’s Michigan coast. That’s nothing new. In 1988, for example, officials closed six public beaches in West Michigan for health reasons as syringes, pill bottles and other plastic materials washed ashore. For the past 26 years, the Ludington-based educational environmental group A Few Friends for the Environment of the World, or AFFEW, has conducted beach sweeps three or four times annually, including one on May 19 that drew about 25 volunteers to the city’s Stearns Park.

sand for years, even decades.” Matt Hoffman, an associate professor in the College of Science at Rochester Institute of Technology, and one of his colleagues model Great Lakes currents, estimating that about 10,000 tons of plastic enter the lakes annually. On Lake Erie alone, hundreds of tons of plastic end up on the surface and hundreds more tons end up on the bottom each year, according to Hoffman. Currents in Lake Ontario tend to move west to east and north to south, and that has international implications because plastic waste from Toronto, one of the region’s largest cities, can move across the lake into U.S. waters. “It emphasizes the policy importance of considering things across state or international lines,” Hoffman said. Tiny tributaries contribute to the contamination, as Paul Steen, a Huron River Watershed Council ecologist, discovered in monitoring creeks that aren’t connected with wastewater treatment plants. The watershed covers more than 900 square miles in parts of seven southeast Michigan counties. “Even these little creeks, 10 feet wide and less than a foot deep, through Ann Arbor in particular, had a ton of microplastics in them,” Steen said. Possible sources are plastic in dust that washes from city streets into the creeks, staying there until major rainstorms speed up the velocity of the water, which “rushes out in pulses” and sends the particles downstream to the Huron River, which empties into Lake Erie, according to Steen.

BIRDS, BREWS AND DUNES

So what about your craft beer? Mason and other researchers tested 12 brands of beer, primarily pilsners, brewed with water that nine municipalities draw from the Great Lakes. The team also tested water from seven of those municipalities—Holland and Alpena, Mich.; Chicago and Glenview; Duluth, Minn.; and Clayton and Buffalo, N.Y.—as well as water from Cleveland and the Rochester, N.Y., vicinity. They found plastic fibers and fragments in all dozen of those brews and in 81 percent of the tap water samples. “The concern LAKE MICHIGAN HAS MORE PLASTIC DEBRIS is we’re polluting our drinking THAN ANY OF THE OTHER GREAT LAKES. water with plastics,” said Jenni“There was lots of plastic,” said fer Caddick, vice president of comAFFEW President Julia Chambers, inmunication and engagement at the cluding cigarette filters, disposable diChicago-based advocacy group Alliapers and Band-Aids. In recent years, ance for the Great Lakes. cigar tips have become more comKris Spaulding, president of Brewmon, while plastic-film balloons have ery Vivant in Grand Rapids, Mich., is become less common, possibly beincreasingly mindful of microplascause of increased public awareness tics getting into the farmhouse ales that they’re a plastic pollution source. and Belgian witbiers her brewery “Over the past couple of years, makes using water from the Grand there’s been a lot more debris because Rapids municipal system, which of higher water levels eating away at draws it from Lake Michigan. the foredune,” said Jim Gallie, superin“I believe it’s a big problem for tendent of Ludington State Park. “The all of us, whatever you’re drinking,” rising water is exposing a lot of older Spaulding said. “(The researchers) plastic objects that had been buried in could have picked any beverage.”

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CHAD LIVENGOOD/CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

PLASTICS

A plastic balloon, found on a Lake Huron beach near Alpena, Mich., is a common type of plastic pollution on the Great Lakes.

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CHAD LIVENGOOD/CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

As for the impact on fish, scientists from Loyola University Chicago and SUNY Fredonia found microplastics in a variety of species from the Muskegon and St. Joseph rivers in southwest Michigan and from Wisconsin’s Milwaukee River that empty into Lake Michigan. Meanwhile, the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission, representing 11 federally recognized Anishinaabe tribes in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, warns that microplastic contamination may contribute to declining Lake Superior fish populations because young fish and species such as cisco may mistake the particles for food. “Many environmental contaminants adhere to the surface of microplastics, creating an exposure route for these chemicals to the fish that consume them, as well as the humans and wildlife that may ultimately consume those fish,” the commission said in a 2020 resolution urging tribal, federal, state and provincial govern-

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ments to support additional research, restrict use of plastic materials and invest in technology to “prevent and safely remove microplastic contamination from the Great Lakes.” Birds are adversely affected as well. To illustrate, University of Toronto scientists have reported microplastics in the bellies of double-crested cormorant chicks in lakes Erie and Ontario. That debris, they write, “may have negative effects on the physiology, growth, development and, potentially, the behavior of these birds.” How did the microplastics get into their digestive systems? In regurgitated fish fed to them by their parents. Among other Great Lakes Basin birds, plastic debris has been found in the diets of Lake Ontario and Hamilton Harbor herring gulls and in the gastrointestinal tracts of St. Lawrence River ring-billed gulls. On land, the first North American study of microplastics in coastal dunes, carried out by researchers at SUNY Oneonta, found plastic pellets,

fragments and fibers at sites along the southern and eastern shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. “That was a bit of a surprise to us,” said James Ebert, a study co-author and geology professor at SUNY Oneonta. His students found lots of small particles on the beach and thought, “If we found them on the beach, they were probably getting into the dunes.” They were indeed. Some ended up in dunes as far as half a football field from the shore, according to Ebert. His study said, “Once in the coastal dune environment, microplastics accumulate in the sediment and it is likely that some are transported farther inland.”

LACK OF RESEARCH Despite rising public and government concern, there’s been far less research about microplastics in the Great Lakes—the world’s largest source of drinking water—than in the oceans. The first peer-reviewed study of

JIM BODENSTAB

A beachgoer discards a plastic bottle in a recycling bin at Silver Beach County Park on Lake Michigan in St. Joseph, Mich.

STEPHEN J. SERIO

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • August 2, 2021 21

A fish with a plastic ring snared around the midsection of its belly and spine was caught in 2011 on Lake Ontario’s Mexico Bay, 40 miles north of Syracuse, N.Y. plastics in the Great Lakes didn’t appear until 2011. In the decade since then, fewer than 10 peer-reviewed scientific studies about their effects on fish, mussels, birds and other wildlife have been published. And so far, there have been no peer-reviewed studies of the effects of Great Lakes microplastics on the human body, according to Mason, the water sampling expert. Experts are calling for more research funding to answer crucial questions, including how plastic biodegrades in freshwater systems and how it affects human health. Among the other mysteries in need of exploration are differences in impact based on the chemical makeup, size and shape of plastic particles. Hoffman, who studies water currents, says governments can benefit from a better understanding of potential risks and how different polymers from different sources move differently in the water. For Ebert, the geologist, the next

step in his sand dunes work is analyzing the results of lab experiments to determine the relationship between particles’ size and the amount of wind necessary to move them. Mason points to the scarcity of studies about the impact on wildlife, saying, “It’s a knowledge gap area. What is in our organisms?” There have been other studies showing microplastics showing up in human feces as well as human placentas, meaning microscopic fragments of plastics are passing from a mother to her developing fetus, Mason said. “We don’t know the ramifications of this on human health,” Mason said. “That’s kind of the front end of this research, understanding what does this mean? Is there some safe level of ingestion? We don’t know.” Eric Freedman is a Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist and director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.

7/30/21 1:51 PM

22 AUGUST 2, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

The proliferation of plastic waste that gets dumped into the oceans each year has intensified public and investor pressure on some of the biggest consumer brand-name companies in Michigan and Illinois to reduce their use of plastic. Ten major consumer brands and retailers, including Chicago-based McDonald’s, Chicago-based Kraft Heinz and Cincinnati-based Kroger, have been faced with resolutions from eco-minded shareholders to disclose how much of their plastic packaging goes into the environment and roll out detailed action plans to reduce plastic. Shareholder resolutions had to be withdrawn at McDonald’s and Kraft Heinz because of paperwork problems, Plastics News reported in June. But the message was received at Kraft Heinz, one of the largest food- and beverage-makers in North American that uses plastic packaging for products that range from Heinz ketchup bottles to tubs of Philadelphia cream cheese. Jonah Smith, global head of environmental social governance for Kraft Heinz, told Crain’s that the resolution was tabled after the company disclosed its eco-friendly efforts so far and its sustainability goals for the future. “Those were all removed because (shareholders) felt confident in our ability to achieve what we were telling them,” Smith said. Kraft Heinz aims for 100 percent of its packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025; currently, that figure is around 80 percent, Smith said. The company recently unveiled fully recyclable caps for its ketchup bottles, an investment that cost $1.2 million. Smith declined to say how much Kraft Heinz is investing in plastic reduction or sustainability efforts overall. Most companies shy away from discussing their approach to plastic use and shareholder pressure. At Kroger’s June 24 annual meeting, 45 percent of shareholders voted in favor of a resolution demanding the grocery chain develop and disclose a plan to reduce its plastic use, despite urging from the company’s board to vote against the proposal, Plastics News reported. In a statement that accompanied its annual report, the supermarket giant detailed the steps it has already taken to combat the plastics crisis, such as its plan to phase out plastic bags by 2025. Kroger, along with its Walker, Mich.-based supermarket competitor Meijer and Deerfield-based pharmacy giant Walgreens, has joined the Beyond the Bag initiative, an effort by major retailers to reduce

single-use shopping bag waste. McDonald’s, Walgreens, Kroger and Rosemont-based US Foods either did not respond to or declined repeated requests for comment from Crain’s. According to As You Sow, one of the environmental groups behind the shareholder resolutions, McDonald’s used 53,000 metric tons of plastic in its packaging in 2018. Just 2 percent of its plastic footprint comes from recycled content, while the majority comes from single-use plastic beverage cups, lids and utensils. Although most companies say they are concerned about plastic waste and are implementing initiatives to reduce it, Reuters found the plastics industry plans to spend $400 billion on new plastic and less than $2 billion on reducing plastic waste. Of the companies Crain’s surveyed, most touted waste collection and diversion efforts. In addition to waste diversion, Meijer said it prides itself on its green infrastructure, including permeable pavers and bioswales, which helps infiltrate stormwater and filter out pollutants, such as microplastics, before the water is discharged back into the Great Lakes. For the Great Lakes, annual plastics pollution is estimated at 11,000 tons—a fraction of the estimated 11 million tons of plastic waste that pollute the world’s oceans every year, according to a study published last summer by Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent public interest group. In 2020, Meijer said it collected more than 6 million pounds—or 3,000 tons—of plastic film for recycling. Erik Petrovskis, director of environmental compliance and sustainability for Meijer, declined to say what percentage of the company’s packaging is currently recyclable but noted the company is “on track” to meet its target of all bakery, deli and brand packaging being 100 percent recyclable by 2025. Today, about 95 percent of bakery and deli containers are recyclable, he said. “When it comes to food packaging, plastic can play an important role in reducing food waste and keeping food safe,” Petrovskis said. SpartanNash, the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based supermarket chain whose brands include Family Fare and D&W Fresh Market, did not respond to specific questions. But in a statement to Crain’s, the company said it had recycled 3.9 million pounds of plastic in 2020. “We are continuously evaluating new ways to keep as much plastic out of our landfills as possible,” said Adrienne Chance, SpartanNash’s vice president of communications. Consumer brands and retailers including Kraft Heinz, Meijer and Post Holdings said they are working

Chicago-based Kraft Heinz recently unveiled fully recyclable caps for its iconic Heinz tomato ketchup.

BLOOMBERG

BY ALLISON NICOLE SMITH

KRAFT HEINZ

Shareholders raise pressure on big brands over plastic pollution

Battle Creek, Mich.-based cereal giant Kellogg has cut the plastic in its cereal bags by 17 percent, amounting to an annual reduction of 1 million pounds. to make their packaging recyclable or reusable. While the pandemic did not directly affect any of those targets, Petrovskis said, it did impact the company’s single-use plastic usage, as Meijer stores did not allow reusable bags for health and safety reasons. Post Holdings, the St. Louis-based cereal-maker that has a plant in Battle Creek, Mich., has cut its annual use of plastic film in cereal bags by 1 million pounds, said Maureen Mazurek, head of environmental social governance for Post. Similarly, Post’s crosstown rival, Battle Creek-based Kellogg, has reduced the packaging of its cereal bags by 17 percent, amounting to 1 million pounds of plastic. Currently, 76 percent of Kellogg’s packaging materials are recyclable, and the company has the same 2025 goal as Kraft Heinz of having completely sustainable packaging. Although plastic manufacturers have typically left public-facing sustainability efforts to retailers and consumer brands, producers of polymers, the petrochemicals that make up single-use plastic, are increasingly speaking up to defend their environmentalism records. Midland, Mich.-based chemicals giant Dow, which is one of the biggest producers of single-use plastic, according to a new report, announced environmental targets for itself last year: eliminating 1 million metric tons of plastic waste by 2030, implementing 100 percent reusable or recyclable packaging by 2035 and going carbon-neutral by 2050. Dow’s global sustainability di-

rector, Haley Lowry, declined to say how much the company is investing in plastic reduction or sustainability efforts overall. Dart Container, the world’s largest manufacturer of foam cups and containers, as well as the maker of Solo cups, cited some of its environmentalism measures underway in a statement to Crain’s, such as the privately owned company’s $18 million investment in the recycling of polystyrene, the plastic foam synonymous with Dart cups. Most companies surveyed by Crain’s said plastic can still be a sustainable choice. Dow and Kraft Heinz also said they are investing in new technologies to reuse plastic. The problem is not with plastic itself, but rather the widespread misuse of it, said Smith, who argued a holistic life-cycle analysis is needed to determine a material’s overall environmental impact. “Plastics have approximately four times less environmental cost—particularly when it comes to carbon emissions—compared to other materials,” said Lowry, who cited a study from Trucost, an independent environmental research group. This report was commissioned by the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents oil and chemical companies such as Dow that manufacture plastic resins. “Plus, they offer a more affordable and healthier quality of life for billions of people,” Lowry added. Lowry panned efforts by state legislatures and municipalities such as Chicago to curb certain types of waste through new laws and ordinances, such as proposed bans on

plastic grocery bags, foam cups and drinking straws. “Bans don’t address human behavior related to waste management or significantly reduce the amount of debris in the environment,” Lowry said. “There are far more impactful ways to address plastic waste in the environment, like improving waste collection and recycling.” Dart’s signature foam products, which have been known to harm aquatic life, have been the subject of recent municipal and statewide bans. “We advocate for and support legislation calling for reasonable, achievable, material-neutral recovery rates and public-private funding mandates to build a nationwide network of recovery and composting facilities to process post-consumer materials of all kinds,” said Michael Westerfield, Dart’s corporate director of recycling programs. In addition, he cited the company’s marine debris prevention initiatives, including $100,000 in grants to cities and organizations to install stormwater management products. Rather than eliminate plastic outright, most companies have focused their corporate sustainability efforts on education campaigns to improve public awareness of recycling and waste reduction. “There is widespread confusion around proper disposal of biodegradable plastics, so Meijer is focused instead on improving the recyclability of plastics and educating customers on proper recycling,” Petrovskis said. As part of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, Meijer has pledged to affix recycling instructions to all of the packaging of its True Goodness brand foods by 2022. Kraft Heinz, Walgreens, McDonald’s, Kroger, Kellogg and Post also are members of Sustainable Packaging Coalition. Dow launched a podcast series this year called Plastics Unwrapped, which features industry innovations in recyclable plastics. All players in the industry, from consumer brands to manufacturers to municipalities, must accept a “shared responsibility” in the effort to solve the environmental crisis, Kraft Heinz’s Smith said. “None of us are perfect,” Smith said. “No company is perfect. But let’s all do what we can and play a role.”

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • August 2, 2021 23

Short on hygienists, dentists scramble amid surge in patients seeking care year, more people are looking to straighten and brighten their smiles. “Demand is up, but we can’t meet it because of the workforce shortage,” says Dr. Priya Tirumalasetty, who runs five-chair Setty Dental Group in the Loop. A national hygienist shortage, coupled with the fact that Americans are requiring more dental care, puts added pressure on the industry. Some dentists, including Tirumalasetty, have even started doing routine cleanings themselves. The move aims to shorten patient wait times, but not without cutting into the time dentists can spend performing higher-acuity procedures. With many dental hygienists citing general concerns about COVID-19 or child care responsibilities, nearly 1 in 12—about 8 percent—nationwide had left the industry since the pandemic started, according to a February report from the American Dental Hygienists’ Association and the American Dental Association. As of June, about 5 percent of dental hygienists still had not returned to work, says Marko Vujicic, chief economist and vice president of the American Dental Association’s Health Policy Institute. Dental assistants also are in short supply, says Dr. Clark Stanford, dean of the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry. “Even though we pay market rate, there’s not a lot of people applying,” Stanford says. Meanwhile, some local dentists

say wages for hygienists and dental assistants already are being driven up by the battle for talent. Those costs are in addition to what dentists are spending on personal protective equipment and high-quality air filters that mitigate the potential for aerosols, or airborne particles, that could transmit a virus. Between such mitigations and widespread availability of COVID vaccines, even patients who avoided dental care earlier in the pandemic are clamoring for appointments.

VOLUMES UP

Compared with pre-pandemic levels, patient volumes are up nearly 40 percent across all four Chicago-area Compass Dental offices, says owner Dr. Brandon Prusa. To accommodate the influx of patients, which is partly due to acquiring patient charts from three practices during the pandemic, Prusa says he’s hired two additional dentists and extended office hours. In addition to seeing more patients, practices are having to accommodate longer-than-average cleanings, taking care to remove excess plaque and tartar from the teeth of patients who missed preventive visits. Cleanings that used to take 45 minutes are taking an hour or longer, says Brittany Brindza, a hygienist at Compass dental. And deep cleanings, which sometimes require an extra visit, are becoming more common. Before the pandemic, patients typically could get an appointment with Tirumalasetty within two weeks. But now she’s booked

up to six weeks in advance. And while Tirumalasetty says patient volumes have returned to pre-pandemic levels, her office is only at about 85 percent of capacity. “Normally we have at least two hygienists—if not three—and at the moment we have one,” Tirumalasetty says. “If we had our second hygienist present, I could say we’d be at 100 percent.” Even some staffing agencies are tapped out. Brindza says she frequently gets calls from staffing agencies looking for workers to pick up shifts. “As of now I Dr. Priya Tirumalasetty, who runs Setty Dental Group, says her office is only at about 85 percent of capacity. can’t temp, but if I could I would,” Brindza says. “We’re pretty dentists say they’re seeing a faster did,” Prusa says. “I’ve seen people busy right now, especially with pa- rate of wear during the pandemic that are coming in with tons of detients who weren’t coming in and as many patients manage a high- cay and crowns and broken teeth. er-than-average level of stress. now they’re trying to get in fast.” It’s just crazy.” “In a normal year, we see a cerFrom June 2019 to June 2021, the Cosmetic procedures also are on total number of employees at den- tain group of patients that clench the rise. Dentists say they have vidtists’ offices nationwide increased and grind and break (off ) bits here eo conferencing to thank, noting 4 percent, passing 1 million work- and there,” Tirumalasetty says. But that large numbers of patients meners for the first time, according to during the pandemic, “it was un- tion seeing their teeth on Zoom the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics precedented how many (patients) calls, which leads to inquiries about data. Even before COVID-19 start- came in with giant broken chunks straightening or whitening. ed spreading, the total number of of teeth.” “People are becoming more dental workers had been ticking up, aware of how they come across with the aging population driving and how they look in the various ‘MASK MOUTH’ demand for dental services. Another pandemic-related oral media platforms that we’ve been But demand is accelerating health affliction the industry is using the last two years,” Stanford sooner than expected. watching: “mask mouth,” a con- says. “And as we start to return to “It has been a difficult year for dition associated with dry mouth, work, people are also wanting to everyone, and we’ve seen that bad breath and tooth decay. (get things done). It’s like coming manifested in teeth,” Tirumalaset“The body has been tricked into back to high school from summer ty says. thinking you have a more humid vacation. . . .Sometimes they want For example, while teeth typi- environment, so our mouths are to get things fixed really fast—fastcally wear down slowly over time, not producing the saliva they once er than we can do.”

JOHN R. BOEHM

DENTISTS from Page 1

Proposed law in Illinois would increase restraints on noncompete agreements NONCOMPETE from Page 3 retention efforts at risk. The measure awaiting Pritzker’s signature, known as Senate Bill 672, amends the FWA and was drafted by a bipartisan group that included the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, employment attorneys and union representation by the Illinois AFL-CIO. Another key addition: It allows employees to recoup attorneys’ fees if they win a lawsuit over a noncompete. This can also benefit businesses, which sometimes want to hire an employee bound by an overly broad covenant. But the positives weren’t enough to outweigh the drawbacks for the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, which didn’t support the

the salary threshold for noncompetes will increase by increments of $5,000 beginning in 2027 until it reaches $90,000 in 2037. “It’s generally our position that noncompetes are a critical tool used by businesses to protect their trade secrets and proprietary information,” Tietz said. “At some point, you are putting at risk some of their market share if you don’t have in place sufficient noncompetes clauses.”

LIMITS

In its original form, the FWA limited noncompetes only for “lowwage” employees, which it defined as someone making minimum wage set by the local jurisdiction or $13 an hour, whichever was less. The changes, which will go into effect in January after Prtizker the bill but aren’t ret“HOPEFULLY THIS (BILL) ALLOWS signs roactive, also require companies to provide a 14-day FOR EMPLOYEE MOBILITY.” review period when asking Amit Bindra, partner, The Prinz Law Firm employees to accept a noncompete. bill. Brad Tietz, the Chamber’s Though few studies have tracked vice president for government re- the ubiquity of noncompetes, one lations, said his members took is- recent analysis with a small samsue with the salary bands because ple size—just 634 respondents— some employees in that range have projected that about half of Illinois access to confidential information, workplaces require at least some such as customer lists or knowl- employees to sign noncompetes. edge on how to use proprietary Various industries, including machinery. The bill also stipulates banking, tech and manufacturing,

P023_CCB_20210802.indd 23

use noncompetes, Tietz said. “I’m very sensitive to how different things affect different industries and businesses of different sizes,” he said. “Could there have been a more thoughtful approach is what I wonder.” Amit Bindra, a partner at The Prinz Law Firm and board member for the Illinois chapter of the National Employment Lawyers Association, helped draft the amendment and said it took two years of collaboration with different stakeholders. Senate Bill 672 began as an effort to bring more certainty to legal disputes, Bindra said. In recent years, state and federal judges have come to different conclusions about what invalidates a noncompete. NELA also wanted to give employees more leverage to settle disputes without incentivizing lawsuits. “Throughout this entire process, we were trying to be bipartisan,” Bindra said. “With the nature of noncompetes, businesses and employers have to be able to hire people. It leads to a situation where you can actually have consensuses.” Bindra said the push to delineate income thresholds came from former State Sen. Heather Steans, the original bill sponsor who left office in January. NELA attorneys, the Illinois chamber and Steans’ office

determined the salary bands by reviewing similar provisions in other states and historical wage data, Bindra said.

COVID MEASURES

The final bill also includes protections for workers who were laid off or furloughed because of the pandemic, requiring companies to pay lost wages if they enforce a noncompete. “Hopefully this allows for employee mobility,” Bindra said. “That would be the end goal that everyone wanted—to make it easier for employees, especially during the pandemic, to find a new job.” Other labor and employment attorneys were split on how the bill will affect Chicago companies. Gregory Abrams, a partner at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, said the bill mirrors a national trend of lawmakers trying to limit noncompetes. The changes, particularly the attorneys’ fees provisions, increases the risk of trying to enforce a noncompete in court. “Employers no doubt are going to have to be more careful, and there’s going to be more uncertainty with new legislation like this,” he said. “As far as the underlying reasons why employers have noncompete agreements in the first place, this would cut against that.”

Matthew Prewitt, a partner at Schiff Hardin, emphasized the positives of the law. He said employers should be grateful that lawmakers codified a common set of standards and said it would be helpful if the FTC does the same since many cases involve parties in different states. “What I need as a lawyer is some certainty about the rules that I’m dealing with and some predictability so it’s a welcome thing for me to be able to advise clients with the benefit of a statue that sets some uniformity going forward,” he said. For Patrick Dolan, founding partner of Siegel & Dolan, the bill isn’t expansive enough. He said only the most senior executives possess the kind of knowledge that should worry companies, and even then, other laws already protect confidential, trademark and proprietary information. Employees often don’t realize they signed noncompetes that could affect future job opportunities and then receive threatening cease and desist letters. Dolan said noncompetes “are still used to dissuade employees from going to other companies when companies do not have a legitimate business interest that needs to be protected. We see it at this firm all the time. We’re constantly fighting it.”

7/30/21 4:14 PM

24 August 2, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

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Rivian is developing the R1T electric pickup, capable of driving more than 300 miles on a single charge and towing up to 11,000 pounds.

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RIVIAN from Page 3 roils communities around the world. The Biden administration aims to curb tailpipe emissions, the largest source of greenhouse gases, and spur electric vehicle sales. Battery-electric vehicle registrations in the U.S. more than doubled this year through May to 166,255, while total light-vehicle registrations rose almost 40 percent to 7.3 million, according to data from Crain’s sister publication Automotive News. U.S. market share for EVs through May rose to 2.3 percent from 1.5 percent a year earlier. Most of the action has been in passenger cars, led by Tesla’s Model Y and Model 3. But interest is shifting to the first generation of electric trucks that can be used as workhorses or just expensive toys for wealthy motorists who want to be environmentally responsible but with some bling. Before the pandemic, Rivian was on track to have the electric truck market to itself for about a year, giving it more time to rack up early sales and establish a reputation for quality and reliability before better-known competitors unveiled their plug-in trucks. That window of opportunity shrinks with the latest missed delivery target.

DELAYS

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

The company this month announced a third delay, with the first pickups due in September instead of July and the first electric SUVs to come shortly after. Buyers say they understand supply chain snafus caused by the pandemic but that Rivian could be more forthcoming in sharing product details and delivery schedules. Seattle marine biologist Hans Haupt, who uses several trucks for his work in Hawaii, says he’s been waiting for details on user interface, charging speeds and range testing information. Haupt, who plans to buy the

But with more delays, the odds Rivian pickup and SUV as well as the Ford F-150 Lightning, says are greater that there will be more he expects another delay. There’s choices in the electric pickup been no press event or invitation space, and more chances of confor test drives, events that are typ- sumers getting interested in other ical when a launch is a month or options, says Tyson Jominy, vice two away, he says. And he hasn’t president of data and analytics seen a mobile app for the truck or at J.D. Power. “Today there’s no SUV, which he concludes is “an- choice. Eighteen months from now, you may have four or more other red flag.” Paduda says he’s trying to find options in this space.” out where service centers will be located and how Rivian is prioriSTOLEN THUNDER tizing city-by-city deliveries. ResNew EV announcements are ervations holders are left to draw stealing some of Rivian’s limeconclusions based on comments light. GM said this month that posted on online forums, which it’s working on another electric may or may not be true. “They pickup, in addition to GMC’s had a strong brand and managed Hummer EV, due out before the to wear it down themselves by not end of the year, and the electric being transparent,” he says. Chevrolet Silverado, expected in Rivian representatives didn’t late 2022. Dodge parent Stellantis respond to several requests for comment, but CEO R.J. Scaringe “(RIVIAN) HAD A STRONG BRAND has blamed delays AND MANAGED TO WEAR IT DOWN on supply chain constraints plaguing many . . . BY NOT BEING TRANSPARENT.” manufacturers: “The cascading impacts of Joe Paduda, R1T reservation holder the pandemic have had a compounding effect greater said it will begin production of an than anyone anticipated. Every- electric Ram pickup in 2024. thing from facility construction, With the exception of the to equipment installation, to ve- $80,000 Hummer, newer entries hicle component supply (espe- are less expensive than the Rivcially semiconductors) has been ian. Prices for Ford’s F-150 are impacted.” expected to start at $45,000 to “We’ve seen delays in EV pro- $50,000. “People don’t underduction from all the big OEMs,” stand the loyalty of the Ford picksays Ben Kallo, a managing direc- up truck customer,” Whiston says. tor at Robert W. Baird. “The Ford pickup has been the At least liquidity isn’t an issue top-selling vehicle in America for for Rivian. A recent $2.5 billion 40 years.” infusion brought Rivian’s total A small-business owner who capital raised to $10.5 billion, can afford only a single truck may from such gilt-edged backers feel safer with a Ford or GM brand as Amazon, Ford and T. Rowe rather than a startup. Price. Amazon and Ford were “Rivian is new and exciting. but early investors, and the upstart you have to be willing to rely on has a contract to supply 100,000 an unproven startup automaker,” delivery vans to the e-commerce Jominy of J.D. Power says. “Getgiant. Reuters reports that Rivi- ting the brand out there, with new an is looking to raise $5 billion to vehicles, a new supply chain and finance a second assembly plant distribution network—that’s a lot and a battery factory. of challenges for a new company.”

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • August 2, 2021 25

Minority-owned financial firms running the books on some heavy-duty deals MINORITY from Page 1 offering by Loop is “very conceivable” in the first half of 2022. He’s targeting a $1 billion valuation by the end of this year. After decades of subsidiary roles in corporate debt and other offerings, firms like Loop and Chicago’s Cabrera Capital Markets are taking on more—and more lucrative— lead underwriting roles. Cabrera, a Hispanic-owned firm, saw deal volume, including public finance, rise to about $160 billion last year from the $90 billion range. Loop continues to expand beyond its broker/dealer roots and for the first time in June sold an unspecified stake to an outside investor to further growth. Reynolds, 67, says the transaction, with bank CIBC, doesn’t signal retrenchment or retirement for him anytime soon. “Not a dime is going to myself or other partners,” he says. Cabrera, meanwhile, is a co- manager on Palatine-based grill-

the ratio is now reversed. “Folks are getting those opportunities to go out there and compete,” says CEO Martin Cabrera. “The business is still cutthroat— that hasn’t changed.” Also helping is a “rising tide lifts all boats” market. Issuance of corporate debt climbed by twothirds to nearly $1.9 trillion last year, a pace nearly matched this year, according to financial data tracker Refinitiv.

WATERSHED MOMENT

In November Northbrook-based insurance giant Allstate picked Loop and three other diverse firms to manage a $1.2 billion debt offering, a watershed moment. For the firms, it meant ascending from joint underwriting, or bookrunning, roles—typically alongside dominant Wall Street firms—to owning the books, as Reynolds puts it. The quartet was also picked by Deere Capital, the machinery-financing arm of Moline-based agricultural manufacturer Deere, for a $600 million debt deal in June. “We have a couple of oth“FOLKS ARE GETTING THOSE ers teed up,” Reynolds says. 50, who grew OPPORTUNITIES TO GO OUT THERE upCabrera, in Little Village with Mexican-immigrant parAND COMPETE.” ents, echoes Reynolds’ take Martin Cabrera, CEO, on the importance of the Cabrera Capital Markets Allstate situation: “You get to control the books, and maker Weber-Stephen Prod- it leads to other opportunities.” ucts’ pending IPO, a SPAC Clients begin to “look at you as a offering in February by Chicago (mainline) firm, that you can go private-equity firm Thoma Bravo out there and compete, perform and a debt issue the same month and deliver.” by cloud computing platform Allstate CEO Tom Wilson promTwilio. Where Cabrera once did ised that the insurer would do four times as many public finance more this year with diverse firms, transactions as corporate ones, including doubling trading vol-

ume. “Sustainability will require the commitment of other corporate bond issuers, investment managers and leading investment banks, many of whom have extensive programs that are being expanded,” he said in a statement at the time of the offering, whose proceeds were used to pay for an acquisition. Although diverse firms, which include women- and veteran-owned firms, last year ran the books on nearly twice as many corporate deals as they did in any of the previous five years, according to Bloomberg, their market share remains tiny—2 or 3 percent. In public finance, with more diversity among the hiring ranks and constituent pressure on governments, the share is closer to 5 percent for negotiated transactions. “I think eventually it’s going to change,” says John Rogers of the persistent lag. “It’s a work in progress.” The co-CEO and chief investment officer of Chicago mutual fund manager Ariel Investments, a Loop client, has been a longtime critic of lack of boardroom diversity.

SUBORDINATE ROLES

Loop has been able to attract a roster of glitzy clients like Google parent Alphabet, Apple, Nike and Walt Disney but in subordinate roles to senior managers. Its 319 corporate debt deals last year totaling $566 billion more than doubled 2019’s volume, and Cabrera Capital’s experience was similar: 42 deals and volume of $120 billion. In 2018, the figure was just $14 billion covering 9 deals, according to Dealogic. Outside of Allstate, Deere and

RISING MINORITY STAKE Business from corporate debt issuers has surged for Chicago’s minority-owned investment banks in the post-George Floyd era. CORPORATE DEBT AND EQUITY ISSUES Value in billions, with number of deals Loop Capital Markets

$274.9

$240.3

Cabrera Capital Markets

$650.3

$295.9

$275.4

$125.8 $112.8

2017

2018

Number of deals

202

215

2019

2020

2021*

265

370

264

Source: Dealogic

$11.2 $14.2 2017 2018 7

$57.9 2019

2020

2021* 37 *Year to date

Boeing, there are few big Chicago-area companies associated with Loop or Cabrera Capital on Refinitiv’s list of recent debt offerings. Reynolds says this is in part because of a relative lack of recent issues by local companies. Loop is “having a dialogue” with about half a dozen of them, including Abbott Laboratories of North Chicago, he says. Loop was a co-manager on last month’s IPO of Ryan Specialty Group Holdings, a Chicago-based insurance industry service provider headed by Aon founder Pat Ryan. Cabrera says it’s hard to pinpoint how much new business is associated with Black Lives Matter and the post-George Floyd era and how much with hustling. An in-

creasing number of diverse firms adds to competition, he points out, while capital constraints restrict chances for more remunerative corporate finance assignments, such as those involving mergers and acquisitions. Loop’s partnership with CIBC, announced in June, is designed to address that challenge in its quest to become a broader financial services firm, after just acquiring a fixed-income manager with $6 billion in assets. Reynolds says Loop and the bank have had a relationship for about five years, one that includes a line of credit for an infrastructure fund he started with Magic Johnson. CIBC declined to comment beyond a press release.

‘Craft grow’ marijuana license winners have a year to raise up their operations GROWING PAINS from Page 3 Production is an overlooked part of the long-awaited expansion of the $1 billion Illinois weed industry. The nearly 200 new retail stores that are expected to open in the next year will need additional sources of marijuana, from smokable “flower” to gummies, which can’t be supplied by growers outside Illinois. Growers also are critical to the state’s promise that recreational cannabis will create wealth and jobs among residents of communities, such as the South and West sides of Chicago, that

tional space for offices, storage and other uses, most craft growers will build 25,000-square-foot facilities, employing 20 to 40 people. The facilities likely will cost $5 million to $10 million, compared with retail shops that cost $750,000 to $1.5 million.

STARTING SMALL

Still, the craft-grow operations will be a fraction of the size of the existing cultivation centers operated by the industry giants, the largest of which can be 10 times bigger. The state envisions craft growers will follow the path of craft brewers, starting small but building “HALF OF THE LICENSE RECIPIENTS ARE lucrative businessby filling a niche. NOT IN A FINANCEABLE POSITION TODAY. es Experts estimate HALF ARE IN A REASONABLE POSITION.” a craft-grow facility could do about Paul Magelli, Illinois Craft Cannabis Association $10 million a year in revenue initially were hit hard by arrests and incar- and approach $40 million at full ceration stemming from the war capacity after several years. Ambrose Jackson, CEO of Helio on drugs. Don’t let the name “craft grow” Labs, says his team located a buildfool you: They start out with 5,000 ing in Broadview before it applied square feet of cultivation space for a craft-grow license, putting up and can increase to as much a $40,000 deposit. There’s also a as 14,000 square feet, about the $40,000 state licensing fee. To besize of the first medical-marijuana gin the permitting process, Helio farms set up in Illinois. With addi- needs architectural drawings that

P025_CCB_20210802.indd 25

he figures will cost a few hundred thousand dollars. “We’ve raised about a quarter-million dollars to get to this point, which is a piece of paper,” he says. “We’ve got to raise about $10 million.” Applicants say they’ve been developing relationships with potential investors for more than a year, one benefit to the delays in issuing licenses. “We haven’t made any commitments, but we’ve had conversations,” says HT23’s Walton, who grew up in the Roseland neighborhood. “I’m pretty confident we’ll identify the right investor.” He worries about how much equity he and his partners will have to give up. “The choice boils down to: Do you want to hold on to control of the business and not have the money to stand up the business or give up some equity to pursue your dreams? I don’t think we’ll have to give up majority ownership.” Legislators who designed the law worried that social-equity applicants might lack the resources to meet their goals. Raising money for new businesses is hard enough, but weed entrepreneurs face unique hurdles. Because marijuana is illegal under federal law,

banks and other traditional sources of capital aren’t available. Paul Magelli, president of the trade group Illinois Craft Cannabis Association, estimates “half of the license recipients are not in a financeable position today; half are in a reasonable position.” A state fund created from licensing fees on incumbent marijuana sellers and producers aims to provide $34 million in low-interest loans to marijuana entrepreneurs. But it’s designed to serve 185 retailers, 40 craft growers and 32 manufacturers. The maximum available is $500,000. “It’s wholly insufficient and wholly immaterial,” Magelli says. “(The state) needs to do something more aggressive off their balance sheet. That amount of money will not move the needle.” The state says it “will continue to search for ways to raise additional capital and increase capacity of the cannabis social equity loan fund over time.”

FUNDING

Existing cannabis companies also are a potential funding source, providing low-interest loans of $100,000 to social-equity applicants as part of the state’s licensing program.

Applicants will have to raise money quickly. State law gives them a year to get the facilities open. It’s a relatively short timetable that’s complicated by tight supplies of specialized materials and labor needed to build cultivation centers that have unique demands for ventilation, lighting and security. “People are going to find trades are busy, general contractors are busy and materials suppliers are swamped,” says Andy Poticha of Cannabis Facility Construction in Northbrook. “They still haven’t gotten over the COVID factor. HVAC is the toughest. Most HVAC companies do other things, such as schools and other buildings.” He says some materials are 50 percent more expensive than a year ago and the overall cost to build a facility now tops $300 per square foot, up from $250 to $285. Demand for already scarce expertise and materials will be stressed even more by the sheer volume of customers hitting the market all at once. “Everyone in Illinois will be ordering at the same time,” says Michael Mayes, CEO of Chicago-based cannabis consulting firm Quantum 9.

7/30/21 4:17 PM

26 August 2, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Prices of homes keep rising faster and faster go prices than the last. At the end of June, the index Home prices here are rising reported prices here were up 9.9 faster each month than the month percent from a year earlier. The month before that it was 9 perbefore, according to new data. Single-family home values cent, and so on back to the index rose by 11.1 percent in the Chica- for September 2020, when prices go area in May compared to the were up 4.7 percent from Septemsame month a year ago, according ber 2019. To be clear: The latest report to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller from the index compares home Indices. That’s the biggest increase prices to where they were in May since December 2013, when Chi- 2020, during the chaotic early cago-area home prices were up months of the pandemic. But home prices only slowed roll in May 2020; HEFTY PRICE INCREASES PROMPT their they didn’t drop then or THE QUESTION OF WHETHER THE at any time during the crisis, according to the CURRENT HOUSING MARKET IS A index. That is, the growth reBUBBLE LIABLE TO BURST. ported in the data is real, not measured as the up11.2 percent from a year earlier, ward reach from a trough. The epaccording to the index, and the ochally tight inventory of homes continuation of a pattern where for sale is contributing signifieach month’s report from the in- cantly to the price spike, accorddex shows a bigger leap in Chica- ing to Case-Shiller.

BY DENNIS RODKIN

Even with double-digit growth in home prices, Chicago still trails all 19 other major cities covered by the index. Minneapolis was next-lowest after Chicago, with home price growth of 12.8 percent in May from a year ago.

NATIONAL SURGE

Nationwide, home prices were up 16.8 percent, according to the index, and in three cities they rose at more than double the rate in Chicago. Prices were up 25.9 percent from a year ago in Phoenix, 24.7 percent in San Diego and 23.4 percent in Seattle. The 16.8 percent increase nationwide “is the highest (nationwide) reading in more than 30 years of S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data,” Craig J. Lazzarra, managing director and global head of index investment strategy at S&P DJI, said in prepared comments accompanying the data. “A month ago, I described April’s performance as “truly extraordinary,” and this month I find myself running out of superlatives.” Hefty price increases prompt

WHERE LEADERS CONNECT AND LEARN

COLDWELL BANKER

A new report shows an acceleration trend, where each month’s increase is bigger than the one that came before

This house on Hoyne Avenue in Beverly sold for $770,000 in May. the question of whether the current housing market is a bubble liable to burst. “While sustained spurts of home price growth are keeping economic watchers on their toes,” Selma Hepp, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic said in comments with the data, “underlying strength in consumer demand remains supported by a significant pool of accumulated savings and solid mortgage

underwriting. Both are markedly different than the home price run-up” of the mid-2000s. Fears of a housing bubble may be further allayed in Chicago by both the far slower rate of growth than some cities are seeing and by this comparison: While home prices nationwide are now 38 percent above their peak before the mid-2000s housing crash, Chicago is still 2 percent below its September 2006 peak.

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CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • August 2, 2021 27

This Bucktown home for sale has deep Chicago roots SOON AFTER THEY BOUGHT a house on Paulina in Bucktown, Lana and John Krstich made what they considered to be an essential change: They added a modern-day take on the old front stoop. They both have roots in South Side neighborhoods, although she grew up in Northwest Indiana, so the couple were fond of the oldschool pastime of stooping, or stoop-sitting, where nearly everybody was out front of their houses in the evening, socializing or just enjoying the night air. The Krstich version of the front stop is an elevated terrace. “We stoop in style,” said Lana Krstich, a life coach. “We have a dining table out there; we’ll take a glass of wine out there. It’s out in the neighborhood.” For time outside that’s less social, they have a courtyard between the house and garage along with an expansive rooftop deck. The stoop isn’t the only reference to Chicago in the Krstich home. They have filled their home with original art from the World’s Columbian Exposition and contemporary Chicago artist David Lee Csicskon, in addition to polka records by Chicago’s Walter “Li’l Wally” Jagiello and others. The house itself appealed to them in part because of the arches and columns on the facade, a modern take on Beaux Arts architecture, which came to Chicago via the World’s Fair in 1892. The Krstiches, who’ve owned the house since 2015, are downsizing. Priced at just under $2 million, the home is represented by Monique Pieron of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chicago.

CHICAGO HOME PHOTOS

Set to hit the market at just under $2 million, the house echoes the city’s history with a convivial modern take on the front stoop and collections of Chicago art BY DENNIS RODKIN

MORE PHOTOS ONLINE: ChicagoBusiness.com/residential-real-estate

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

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Vol. 44, No. 31 – 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 2021 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved.

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