Crain's Chicago Business - 12/6/21

HOLIDAYS: Year-end light shows deliver revenue boost to area’s nature parks. PAGE 3

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Fanning the flames of distrust. PAGE 10

CHICAGOBUSINESS.COM | DECEMBER 6, 2021 | $3.50

STEALING

Andrew Ghazarian, sales supervisor at Rag & Bone in the Gold Coast: “People are scared.”

CHRISTMAS How the rise in organized retail theft is scaring shoppers, worrying workers and squeezing stores during the industry’s prime selling season

BY ALLY MAROTTI

TODD WINTERS

THERE’S A NEW FEATURE at many luxury stores in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood this holiday season: security guards posted just inside the doors, ushering cusJOE CAHILL: tomers in one at a time.

On a recent afternoon, queued customers Stop smash at luxury fashion retailer Moncler watched mobs quickly— workers install a new display window, the and carefully. recently removed shattered pane of glass PAGE 4 propped on the sidewalk nearby.

“I’ve been shopping more online because I’m afraid. I just don’t want to be in the line of anything,” said neighborhood resident Kaya Patel, who was waiting for her turn to enter the store See RETAIL on Page 23

This lab experiment carries some risks

Homebuyers are opening their wallets to create the sanctuary they need in these anxious times

Big biotech markets like Boston have centralized campuses. Chicago’s is fragmented. Does it matter?

BY DENNIS RODKIN Erin Shakoor, a Chicago interior designer, was pleased but not entirely surprised when her business picked up in early 2021. The pandemic-era home sales boom had kicked in a few months prior, and when people buy homes, they typically go on

to buy couches, drapes and other furnishings to put in them.

The bigger surprise, Shakoor says, is that when people decorate now, “they do more of it, they do all of it. Throw out everything they had and replace it all.”

One reason, Shakoor believes, is that, thanks to COVID and the anxiety of these times, “we feel

TODD WINTERS

As home sales boom, so does spending Christine Mitchell Roman of CMD Planning & Design: “I’m busier than I’ve ever been.” a need to release. Let go of the past.” Another reason could be that people who’ve kept their See HOUSING on Page 20

BY DANNY ECKER Locally born life sciences companies no longer have to worry about a lack of high-quality lab space forcing them to leave town as they grow, thanks to developers racing to build it during the COVID-19 pandemic. Where those companies decide to go in

the Chicago area is a separate issue, and one that is shaping the next chapter of the city’s evolution into a biotech and pharmaceutical research hub.

While more mature life sciences markets like Boston, RaleighDurham and San Diego feature See LIFE SCIENCES on Page 21

NEWSPAPER l VOL. 44, NO. 49 l COPYRIGHT 2021 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. l ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

COMING NEXT WEEK: Crain’s annual guide to everything you need to succeed in Chicago business.

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2 DECEMBER 6, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Can Team Lightfoot change police culture?

A

t a time when the city continues to suffer through a horrid spell of street violence that is endangering its economic future, City Hall desperately needs to get right the implementation of the historic consent decree governing how the Chicago Police Department is held accountable and deals with the public.

I have increasing doubts whether Lori Lightfoot is succeeding in an initiative that ought be central to her mayoralty. Some progress is being made at an admittedly

IN OTHER WORDS, THE HARD WORK IS YET TO BE DONE. difficult time in history. But reviews from outsiders, the departure of key officials, and critiques from watchdogs such as former Inspector General Joe Ferguson are beginning to reach critical mass.

Typical of the types of mixed reviews Team Lightfoot has been receiving was a Joyce Founda-

tion web event the other day that featured Maggie Hickey, a prominent Chicago lawyer who serves as independent monitor of the consent decree.

On the one hand, Hickey said the city now is in partial compliance with more than half of the paragraphs in the federal consent decree, 266, while it’s in noncompliance with 215 other paragraphs and is under evaluation for 12 more. The movement is real, and not just “checking off boxes,” as one recently resigned top police official suggested, Hickey said.

There is increasing progress on things such as improved training, community engagement and the like.

On the other hand, she instantly added, the progress not only is “preliminary,” but falls in the category of “developing” as opposed to actually implementing policy. In other words, the hard work is yet to be done.

Is the arc of progress here so far reasonable, given all the factors involved? The five-year timetable laid out in the decree is “extremely

ambitious,” Hickey replied. “I’m hoping it will be seven to eight.”

And in Los Angeles, which indeed appears to have turned around its department, it took 12.

So, is the glass half full or half empty? Answer: Yes. Or, as panel moderator Quentin Williams put it, there’s a difference between changing police policy and police culture.

Others don’t even see a half-full glass. Such as another member of the Joyce Foundation panel, Cara Hendrickson, who is executive director of Business & Professional People for the Public Interest.

“Progress, from my perspective, isn’t fast enough,” she summarized.

More pointed criticism comes from Ferguson, who in a separate phone interview was absolutely scathing, saying implementing policy changes has been “going terribly” since David Brown succeeded Charlie Beck as police superintendent.

Ferguson blames much of that stagnation on a pair of little-noticed but key structural problems: One, a relative lack of civilians in positions of power here, with only 4% to 5%

GREG HINZ ON POLITICS

of CPD staffers who are civilians, compared with almost 20% in New York City. Two, a lack of resources, with fewer than 25 people in CPD working full time on implementing the consent decree, compared to roughly 200 in Los Angeles at the height of its changes.

Of course, Ferguson, who was pushed out of office by Lightfoot, has reasons to want to even up the score. But his complaints are exactly the kinds of things being said by former Lightfoot aides who worked on police reform: former Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Susan Lee and ex-police audit division chief Chad Williams.

In emails first reported by the Chicago Tribune, Williams wrote that, “My disappointment with the inability of this department’s top leadership to even feign interest in pursuing reform in a meaningful

manner has made it impossible for me to remain involved.” Said Lee in a separate email, “I worry that the mayor’s public safety team does not have enough capacity to keep moving the ball forward.”

Lightfoot’s office is sticking by the statement it issued after the emails became public, saying CPD compliance continues to accelerate, all officers now receive at least 40 hours of training a year (up from zero before) and 10 police districts now are using a new program designed to boost neighborhood trust. “The city and CPD remain committed to fulfilling not only the requirements delineated by the consent decree but will go above and beyond what is outlined.”

I hope so. Chicago’s future depends on that. But I’m beginning to wonder.

Sportsbooks are a factor in city’s gambling mix

W

each year, he claims.

Lost revenue on that scale would pose a threat to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to use returns from the city-owned casino to help address critical underfunding of the city’s police and fire pension funds.

But Lightfoot isn’t rattled. She seems to have a hunch that Bluhm’s argument does not hold up to scrutiny, and she won’t be slowed

by Bluhm’s concerns.

Lightfoot is pushing to pass a Chicago sportsbook ordinance this month. Sports gambling has become so popular it’s “in our DNA and blood system,” she says, and Chicago should not delay.

She also claims that Bluhm has offered no data to prove that the sportsbooks would threaten the city’s casino. “Talk is talk. Facts and data, that’s what I’m about,” she said at a press conference 29.

NO OTHER BIDDER FOR A CHICAGO Nov. Credit Lightfoot with a rhetorical flourish. But CASINO HAS RAISED A CONCERN. good the statement isn’t entirely fair, either.

When I interviewed Bluhm in Bluhm started in real estate, then his residence for this column, he morphed decades ago into buildhanded me a 20-page presentation ing and running casinos. He runs he said he shared with Lightfoot in Rivers Casino, in Des Plaines, the a meeting. It has data to support state’s biggest by far.

Bluhm knows the economics of Bluhm’s case, with more likely available from the consultants who gambling. And when he crunchdid the math. es the numbers, he projects that There are market indicators that sportsbooks at Wrigley Field, the support Bluhm’s concerns. For United Center and Guaranteed example: The potential payoff from Rate Field would cannibalize the arena-based sportsbooks must be Chicago casino. The city stands big enough to justify the $10 million to lose $12 million in tax revenue hen the Illinois Legislature approved a huge expansion of gambling in 2019, it set the stage for a longdiscussed city-owned Chicago casino. It also made possible the emergence of sportsbooks—betting parlors at the city’s sports arenas.

And if we believe a line of argument that has emerged in recent weeks, the launch of one could pose a mortal threat to the success of the other.

That’s right. In the eyes of Neil Bluhm—a gambling magnate and favorite to win the bidding to build and operate Chicago’s cityowned casino—the team-run sportsbooks could undermine the very business model of the Chicago betting house.

There is little doubt that Bluhm is wheeling and dealing. A selfmade, Chicago-born billionaire,

licensing fee the state is charging to run one. And when DraftKings in 2020 agreed to pay a sweet $100 million to the Cubs for the right to run the Wrigley Field sportsbook for a decade—well, there must be a reason.

In fact, Bluhm himself recently tried to put his own skin in the arena sportsbook game. As owner of a big online betting outfit, BetRivers, my reporting indicates, Bluhm sought arena sportsbook contracts with owners of the Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks and possibly others.

By D

DAVID GREISING ON GOVERNMENT

He didn’t get the business. But his bid alone undermines Bluhm’s claim he is opposing the teams’ sportsbooks out of concern for the city’s casino plans. Had the impact on Chicago’s casino revenues so worried him, then why did Bluhm bid for those books?

One other oddity is the lack of industry support for Bluhm’s position. No other bidder for a Chicago casino has raised a concern, and Bally’s even issued a statement supporting sportsbooks at See GREISING on Page 9

97% OF OUR CURRENT C U STO M E R S R A N K T H E I R S AT I S FAC T I O N W I T H U S A S “ E XC E L L E N T ” O R “A B O V E AV E R AG E .”

B E Y O U R B A N K E R ’ S T O P P R I O R I T Y. W I N T R U ST.CO M / P R I O R I T Y

CORRECTIONS

A photo caption in “Backstage Dramas,” a Nov. 29 Crain’s Forum article, misidentified Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Anna Shapiro.

In a Nov. 29 article about production of Dodge muscle cars, a headline stating that Stellantis’ Belvidere plant is the right size for the Challenger and Charger should have been attributed to Sam Fiorani of AutoForecast Solutions.

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

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CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • DECEMBER 6, 2021 3

Chicago tech’s diversity problem starts in college A new study from a tech group highlights the shortage of Black and Latino computer science grads in Illinois

BY KATHERINE DAVIS

ALEX HEWITT

The lack of diversity at technology companies in Illinois mirrors the demographic profile of computer science programs at local public and private universities, a new report shows.

Tech development organization P33 reports that 4% of bachelor’s degrees in computer science from Illinois colleges were awarded to Black students and 11.9% went to Latino students in 2020. That’s up slightly from 3.7% for Black graduates and 11.8% for Latino graduates in 2019, according to data from the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

The number of Latino students earning CS degrees has climbed steadily since 2016, when just 8.9% of graduates in the state were Latino. However, the percentage of Black CS graduates is down from 4.9% in 2016.

In 2020, Illinois colleges awarded CS degrees to just 19 Black women, according to P33 and IBHE data.

Nationally, Black and Latino students made up 3.81% and 8.16%, respectively, of CS graduates in 2019, according to data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data Systems Completions.

Chicago Botanic Garden, which mounted its “Lightscape” show for the first time in 2019, has sold out both years.

THESE LIGHTS ARE DEFINITELY GOLDEN

The growing tradition of year-end light shows is bringing a much-needed revenue boost to Chicago’s big nature parks BY STEVE JOHNSON

T

he lightbulbs that adorn Chicago’s major nature parks this time of year glow every color of the rainbow as they mimic the shapes of animals and spotlight the crags of ancient oak trees.

But for the not-for-profit institutions that mount the region’s growing number of holiday-season lights festivals, the dominant shade might as well be green.

For decades at Brookfield and Lincoln Park zoos, and much more recently at Chicago Botanic Garden and Morton Arboretum, the annual displays of candlepower on the grounds have been both a hallowed tradition and a significant contributor to the bottom line, a way to turn previously empty cold-weather days into nights bustling with tens of thousands of visitors.

P003_CCB_20211206.indd 3

“It’s essentially a third of annual earned revenue,” said Alicia LaVire, marketing and communications vice president at Morton Arboretum in Lisle, which in 2013 began its artful “Illumination” spectacle, a mile-long walk amid trees lit up like stars of some Gothic stage drama. “It’s a vital benefit to the organization in funding tree research, collections, education and other aspects of the mission.”

At Lincoln Park Zoo, 2021’s “ZooLights” is projected to bring in roughly $2.5 million of a $31 million annual budget, even with most event tickets being free or $5, said CEO-elect Megan Ross.

“It is a significant bump for us,” Ross said.

Chicago Botanic Garden, which mounted its See LIGHTS on Page 23

LACKING DIVERSITY The breakdown of bachelor’s degrees in computer science awarded in Illinois in 2020.

ILLINOIS COMPUTER SCIENCE SHARE 9.9% 6.2% 4% Nonresident alien

Other

11.9%

21.8%

Hispanic

Asian

Black, AfricanAmerican

46%

White

Note: “Other” includes people who identified as two or more races, American Indian or Alaskan Native, and those whose origin was unknown.

Source: Illinois Board of Higher Education

P33, founded by Penny Pritzker and Chris Gladwin, emphasizes nurturing the tech talent pipeline because the sector is growing rapidly and provides high-paying jobs, specifically in software See DIVERSITY on Page 22

Why Exelon gave NY a better deal than Illinois Illinois lacks the leverage New York used to win a promise to clean up shuttered plants within 20 years instead of 60

BY STEVE DANIELS For a year leading up to early September, the Rockford area braced for the prospect of a shuttered nuclear plant that would sit dormant on 1,782 acres, serving only as a high-level nuclear waste repository, for 60 years.

Legislation enacted later that month providing a five-year subsidy for Exelon’s Byron station, as well as two other Exelon-owned plants, staved off closure. But Illinoisans got a glimpse of the future when that plant and five others in the state eventually do shut down—thousands of acres that will remain unproductive no-go zones for up to six decades.

It doesn’t have to be that way, at least if you’re in New York state. Exelon, which owns multiple nukes in New York, last week promised to restore plant sites in that state within 20 years of closing.

That’s about how long the company took to clean up the site of the Zion, Ill., nuclear plant on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Operationally troubled Zion closed in the late 1990s, and Exelon committed to

EXELON’S FLEET OF ILLINOIS PLANTS IS 3.5 TIMES THE SIZE OF THE NEW YORK FLEET IN TERMS OF POWERGENERATION CAPACITY. an accelerated restoration process, which is nearly complete.

It’s making no such promises for its remaining Illinois nukes—the largest fleet in the nation. Exelon’s fleet of Illinois plants is 3.5 times the size of the New York fleet in terms of power-generation capacity. There See EXELON on Page 21

12/3/21 4:29 PM

4 DECEMBER 6, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

JOE CAHILL ON BUSINESS

Stop smash mobs quickly—and carefully

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mob raids on local stores will tarnish Chicago’s reputation near and far.

Retailers, for their part, won’t play sitting ducks for long.

When the cost of theft gets too high, or the danger to employees and customers too great, they’ll close stores, as Walgreens did recently in San Francisco after thieves hit several of the chain’s outlets there.

Crime-driven closings would create more gaps in shopping trips that already have too much empty space to fill. Darkened storefronts dot the Loop and even Michigan Avenue, where the vacancy rate has soared to 26%, compared with 15% in 2019, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Notable vacancies include the former Macy’s location in Water Tower Place, along with shuttered Uniqlo and Gap flagships on Michigan Avenue.

The situation requires a strong, coordinated, and deft response from law enforcement and retailers. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has formed an organized retail crime task force that brings together law enforcement ANYTHING THAT HURTS RETAILING agencies across the HURTS THE ENTIRE CHICAGO REGION. state with retailers to combat largescale theft. Raoul emphasized $4 billion to theft last year, the importance of disrupting according to the Illinois Retail the criminal networks that use Merchants Association. On top social media to organize attacks of that, frightened shoppers stay and sell stolen merchandise. away, depressing sales. Stores “Increasingly, these incidents spend more on security, driving are not isolated incidents, and up costs. Brazen thefts also enforcement must not just focus rattle workers, exacerbating the on individuals charged with labor shortage that has plagued individual acts of retail theft, but retailing during the pandemic. on the broader organization or But there’s more than a sucscheme of which these individcessful holiday selling season uals may be a part of,” he said in at stake. Anything that hurts rea speech announcing the task tailing hurts the entire Chicago force in September. region.

Taking down the masterIn the short term, lost sales minds is essential, but it can mean lower tax revenues for the take a while. In the meantime, state and municipalities. Longer stronger frontline defense is term, perceptions that shopping critical. That’s where it gets a is unsafe threaten Chicago’s bit tricky. The law enforcement status as a retail mecca. The corstrategy has to be effective withnucopia of stores in and around out being too heavy-handed. the city underpins the area’s Otherwise, the solution could appeal as a place to live and hurt retailers as much as the visit. Travelers from around the problem.

Midwest and the world come A visible police presence on here for shopping opportunities the streets and security guards they don’t get at home. in stores can deter criminals Chicago’s convention indusand give shoppers a sense of try also relies heavily on retail security. But an overwhelming as a competitive edge over rival show of force and other obtrudestinations. Conventioneers sive security measures can deter drop big money in stores along shoppers along with thieves.

Michigan Avenue and other “You don’t want to have an retail corridors. Their spending armed-camp feeling to it, so it also boosts local hotels, restaumust be done artfully,” IRMA rants, theaters and tax coffers.

But the golden goose is at risk. CEO Rob Karr told Marotti. “It’s a balancing act.”

A single bad experience can We need to find the right sour a visitor on the entire city. balance quickly.

And a string of well-publicized ould you like to be shopping in a store when hammerwielding thugs charge in to smash display cases and make off with armloads of merchandise? Me neither.

Yet that scenario is on the minds of shoppers and store clerks this holiday season.

They’ve seen the footage of—and in some cases experienced—brazen attacks on retailers across the country.

Chicago has had its share, with stores invaded in Oak Brook, along the Magnificent Mile and on the Gold Coast.

As my colleague Ally Marotti reports, these incidents have a chilling effect on brick-andmortar retailing at a time when stores are hoping strong holiday sales will help them start to climb out of the crater COVID-19 left in their balance sheets. But why risk getting trampled by a smash mob when you can shop online from the safety of your living room?

Large-scale organized retail crime hurts stores in several ways. Illinois retailers lost nearly

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Schiff Hardin merging with D.C. law firm The combination will vault what will be known as ArentFox Schiff into the nation’s top 100 legal firms amid an industry undergoing consolidation

BY STEVEN R. STRAHLER Schiff Hardin, a Chicago law firm with roots that predate the Great Chicago Fire, is merging with Arent Fox, a Washington, D.C.-based law firm that is about twice its size. The combination, to be known as ArentFox Schiff, will have more than 600 lawyers and lobbyists and revenue of about $500 million, enough to put it among the nation’s top 100 law firms.

The deal, which is expected to be completed in March, has been under discussion for months. Firms like Schiff Hardin are under pressure to bulk up as the legal industry consolidates, favoring big players and boutiques, with recruiting and other challenges for firms in between. The dealmakers say ArentFox Schiff will have a book of business almost evenly divided between corporate, litigation and regulatory assignments, with about 200 lawyers in each group.

The new law firm ArentFox Schiff will be chaired by Arent Fox’s Anthony Lupo.

JOINING FORCES

Leadership assignments reflect the relative heft of the merging firms: The new firm will be chaired by Arent Fox’s Anthony Lupo, while Joseph Krasovec, Schiff ’s managing partner, and Arent Fox’s Cristina Carvalho will be comanaging partners. It will have locations in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Ann Arbor, Mich., Southern California and San Francisco, in addition to the headquarters cities.

Otherwise, the firms are coequals in a crucial yardstick for law firm mergers: profits per equity partner. Each firm is reporting about $1 million.

Despite shrinking over the last few years, Schiff Hardin is expected to report record revenue per lawyer and profits per equity partner, Krasovec says.

He and Lupo say the merger will put the new firm in a better competitive space, with complementary practices combining to serve clients more broadly.

Arent Fox has some glitzy clients, courtesy of a brand protection practice that looks after the interests of fashion labels like Yves St. Laurent, Diane von Furstenberg and Fila, and tech clients like Tesla, PlayStation and LG. Lupo leads its fashion and retail group. Carvalho, according to the firm’s website, has represented candy-maker Mars and managed soccer legend Pele’s intellectual property portfolio.

Lupo says this will dovetail with Schiff’s expertise with consumer product goods. “We want to be soup-to-nuts in those industries,”

Joseph Krasovec, Schiff’s managing partner, and Arent Fox’s Cristina Carvalho will be co-managing partners. he says. In another example, year, to $333.6 million.

Carvalho says, “When we plug in (Arent Fox’s) regulatory expertise PRACTICE AREAS into (Schiff’s) transactional pracEarlier this year, Krasovec tices, that makes us stand out.” said Schiff was focusing on But how much, over time, will private-equity and estate planthe new firm stand out in its new, ning clients and white-collar albeit larger, category? There are and internal investigations as more than 25 U.S. law firms with “areas of prominence.” Energy, annual revenue between $400 consumer products and manumillion and $600 million—plus, facturing are other sectors of insays industry recruiter Kay Hoppe, terest. Schiff also represents the “a wide range of firms in that mil- National Association of Realtors lion-dollar (profit per equity part- and other clients in class-action ner) bracket.” She adds, “They’re or putative class-action lawsuits. competing with a limited client “WHEN WE PLUG IN (ARENT FOX’S) base. How many seats will be left REGULATORY EXPERTISE INTO when the music (SCHIFF’S) TRANSACTIONAL PRACTICES, stops?”

Krasovec says THAT MAKES US STAND OUT.” he is “cautiously optimistic” that Cristina Carvalho, co-managing partner of Schiff ’s revenue ArentFox Schiff this year will top last year’s $174 million, which Other significant practice was down about 7% and a third areas of the combined firm, lower than in 2015, as lawyers according to the merger partleft for other firms. Two years ners, will include bankruptcy ago, Schiff Hardin had Chi- and financial restructuring, litcago’s 10th-largest law office, igation, government relations, with 184 lawyers. By mid-2021, international trade and investits ranking had slipped six ment and regulatory advice. spots as the number of lawyers Krasovec said last week that dwindled to 156. building up a clean-energy Last year, the firm slipped practice, something that eludto 163rd by revenue in a rank- ed Schiff alone, is a goal, as is ing by the American Lawyer, more work out West. from 158th in 2019 and 150th in “It’s been a challenge to do 2018. Arent Fox, at No. 107, re- what we want to do in Califorported a 2.3% revenue gain last nia,” he said.

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6 DECEMBER 6, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

TECH TAKEAWAY

DON’T WAIT UNTIL IT’S TOO LATE!

Kristi Ross Ross is co-CEO and co-founder of Tastytrade, best known for its daily online broadcasts about trading. It also features a trading platform and brokerage firm called Tastyworks, as well as the Small Exchange, a new futures platform. This year, British online-trading firm IG Group bought the company for $1 billion. Ross, 53, and her husband live in Oak Park with their daughters, 15, 19 and 22. By Laura Bianchi

>

Deduct the Full Cost of Fire Sprinkler Systems in Qualified Property

What kind of kid were you?

Excessively competitive. I was the youngest of four, always jockeying for attention and making sure I was excelling.

What did you do?

I tested that theory during my second marathon. I had zero time to train, but refused to drop out. I finished the race—not in basketball shoes—but it did take a few extra days to recover.

>

<

How competitive are you?

When I ran my first marathon, I did all the right things, from diet to training. During the race, I met a guy who didn’t train and ran it in basketball shoes. I realized that running the race was 90% mental and 10% physical.

> A turning point?

My mom passed away when I was a teenager and my parents were divorced. I went to live with my grandmother. At that age, you just have to dive in and handle life. Finance was one of the things I knew I had to understand.

Install or retrofit fire sprinklers today!

>

708-710-1448 • FIREPROTECTIONCONTRACTORS.COM

A hurdle you have overcome?

Being a woman in financial services and tech.

>

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

An example?

I headed up a meeting early in my career that was packed with older men, some from other companies. I’m walking around with my team, introducing myself, and one guy gestures to me and asks me to get him coffee.

>

Wednesday, Dec. 15 | 1 - 2 p.m. | Virtual Webcast

A Crain’s Equity Discussion

SPEAKERS Cassandra West Assistant Managing Editor Crain’s Chicago Business

Register at Chicagobusiness.com/EquityWebcast $30 per person | Includes access to webcast and archived recording

What did you do?

I got a speech assessment and read everything out there on public speaking. Getting back up after you fail is a key lesson I learned from my dad.

>

Presented by

A pivotal moment in your career?

I had to give a high-stakes speech and decided to let my slides be my prompts instead of preparing notes. I didn’t really practice and, unfortunately, the slides got messed up and I could not reorient my storyline. It was an epic failure.

>

Mehrsa Baradaran Law Professor, UCI Law Author of How the Other Half Banks and The Color of Money, Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

>

Wealth, Race and Business: A Crucial Crossroads

Wealth disparity across the nation is more prevalent than ever before. Chicago, along with many other cities, has long faced challenges when it comes to wealth-building opportunities to prioritize investing in minority suppliers, corporate inclusion, diversity in the C-suite and beyond. Crain’s Cassandra West talks with Mehrsa Baradaran, law professor and acclaimed author of the landmark book, The Color of Money, Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap in a virtual setting about how business and policy makers are addressing wealth disparity in America and what has changed since her groundbreaking book was released in 2017.

Ha! How did you respond?

I said, “Absolutely. Cream and sugar? Would anyone else like coffee?” After I gave him the coffee, I walked to the front of the room and started my meeting. Defusing awkward moments can play in your favor.

(The buyout) was some big payday. Did you splurge on anything?

Nothing big. I’m a minimalist by nature. Although I did buy two new pairs of my favorite black Nikes.

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12/3/21 3:17 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • DECEMBER 6, 2021 7

Is this vintage student housing building worth $90 million?

SPONSORED CONTENT

talking

WEALTH

THE TAX CODE IS CHANGING

The owner of the Arc at Old Colony, a 472-bed landmark property leased to Columbia College, has put the Loop building up for sale, testing the investment market for Chicago student housing which was severely disrupted by COVID The owner of a vintage Loop building converted into student housing has put the property up for sale, perking up a dormant downtown market for apartment buildings geared to college students.

The Arc at Old Colony, a 127-year-old building next to the Harold Washington Library Center, could attract bids in the $90 million range, said Ben Harkrider, transaction manager at Newmark, the brokerage hired to sell the property. DWS, the German investment firm that owns the building, paid $76.8 million for it in 2018.

The offering will test the Chicago investment market for student housing, a once-hot sector that has been quiet for a couple of years. Three major properties—30 East in the Loop and Tailor Lofts and Automatic Lofts in the West Loop—changed hands in the fall of 2019, but nothing big downtown has sold since then.

The COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted the student hous-

ing market, and the downtown apartment market more broadly. But the sector has rebounded over the past year as college students have returned to campus.

Downtown landlords rely on demand from students at DePaul University, Roosevelt University, Columbia College Chicago and other schools.

Rather than leas- Arc at Old Colony ing all 472 beds at the Arc at Old Colony directly 2018, when it broke off on its own to students, DWS leases them to in an initial public offering. A DWS Columbia College, which rents spokesman did not respond to a rethem to its students. The mas- quest for comment on the building.

The Arc at Old Colony, a 17-story ter lease provides a guaranteed source of income—a measure building at 37 W. Van Buren St. of safety for a new owner. Yet completed in 1894, is an official the lease is up for renewal in fall Chicago landmark and listed on 2023, according to Newmark, so the National Register of Histora buyer must factor in the risk ic Places. Designed by Holabird that Columbia won’t renew. A & Roche, it operated as an office Columbia spokeswoman was not building until 2014, when a development group including Chiimmediately available.

DWS, formerly known as RREEF, cago-based CA Ventures began was a unit of Deutsche Bank until converting it into student housing.

COSTAR GROUP

BY ALBY GALLUN

What We Know Today

Deal combines No. 1 and 2 home listing photo companies With its acquisition of TourFactory, Rosemont-based VHT Studios jumps from reaching about 60% of the nation’s housing markets to ‘90%-plus,’ its CEO says

BY DENNIS RODKIN Rosemont-based VHT Studios, the nation’s biggest real estate listing photography company, acquired the second-biggest such firm.

The acquisition of TourFactory, based in Spokane, Wash., puts VHT on enough of the U.S. map that it could handle “90%plus” of all the nation’s homes when they go on the market, said VHT Chairman and CEO Brian Balduf.

Until the acquisition, VHT Studios had a reach that was “probably 55% to 60%,” he said.

Prior to the deal, announced last week, VHT Studios operated mostly east of the Mississippi River, Balduf said, and TourFactory was mostly west.

“We’ll now cover 48 states,” said Balduf, who founded VHT Studios in 1998. The two states not covered are Alaska and North Dakota.

Balduf said the combination gets his firm into many western U.S. cities where it hasn’t been, including San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

P007_CCB_20211206.indd 7

Terms of the acquisition are not being released, Balduf said.

VHT Studios shoots around 100,000 home listings a year, Balduf said, and TourFactory shoots about 80,000.

Even combined, they’re a small sliver of the more than 5.6 million U.S. homes sold per year; “it’s still a very fragmented industry,” Balduf said.

Merging into one firm with reach in almost the entire country “creates a lot of opportunity,” Balduf said. National real estate brokerages like @properties, Compass and Coldwell Banker may find it appealing.

His firm’s national reach may “make those national brands want to come to us,” Balduf said.

More growth opportunity is ahead, Balduf said, thanks to industry changes in the pandemic era. House hunters rely more now on “being-there” technology that goes beyond two-dimensional photos to three-dimensional tours and drone photography, and the appraisal industry is moving toward accepting those technologies in appraisals.

The newly merged companies

Senior Wealth Advisor, Co-Founder Capstone Financial Advisors (630) 241-0833

If you’re confused about the current discussions in Congress, you’re not alone.

These are some of the most complex legislative negotiations I’ve seen in my 20+ years in wealth management.

If you take away one idea, it’s this — work with competent, professional advisors, especially in times of uncertainty.

At issue is how to fund the Build Back Better Act. The proposed funding centers around changes to income tax and retirement savings rules, particularly for high-income, high-net-worth individuals and businesses.

It’s possible that Congress doesn’t pass the act, but this is what we know so far:

Helping high-net-worth families and individuals for most of his 20+ year career, Troy is focused on creating a best-in-class financialplanning experience. As fee-only, goal-based financial advisors, Capstone fiduciaries do not accept commissions nor additional compensation for services.

For more information, visit www.capstone-advisors.com.

Who Would the New Tax Code Affect?

Tax revisions will likely affect taxpayers whose incomes are more than $400,000 (single) and $450,000 (joint).

Income smoothing, where income is kept consistently below the thresholds year-to-year, or income bunching, where we alternate years of higher-than-threshold income and lowerthan-threshold income, may help mitigate tax liabilities.

TROY E. BUTE, CFP®

Individual Income & Trust Taxes Income tax rates will remain unchanged for those below $10 million. Income exceeding that would be subject to normal income tax plus a 5% surtax. Income in excess of $25 million would see an additional 3% surtax. This means ultra-high-net income taxpayers would see their marginal tax rate increase from 37% to 45%.

For non-grantor trusts, the 5% initial surtax starts at $200,000 of income, and the 3% additional surtax starts at $500,000.

For these types of trusts, we look at possible changes to how “income” is defined within trust agreements as a means of distributing trust income at lower tax rates.

Small Business Income Taxes Since the introduction of the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax in 2013 to help fund The Affordable Care Act, active operating pass-through entities (S-Corporations or Limited Liability Companies) have been exempted from its application. In the current proposal, the NIIT will apply to taxpayers with incomes exceeding certain thresholds.

A small business owner generating more than $25 million would see their marginal federal income tax rate go from 37% to 48.8%.

Corporate Income Taxes A minimum corporate income tax of 15% of book income is being proposed for businesses with profits exceeding $1 billion. Companies that buy back their stock will see a 1% excise tax.

Brian Balduf offer the same product, real estate imagery, but their clientele are different parts of the pipeline. VHT Studios pitches its photographers to real estate brokers, while TourFactory pitches its technology platform to real estate photographers.

Balduf said the TourFactory name will remain in place “for the foreseeable future.”

TourFactory was a unit of Collabra Technology, which will take an ownership stake in VHT Studios as part of the deal. VHT Inc., the parent company of VHT Studios, is owned by investors, Balduf among them.

Retirement Plan Taxes No new retirement plan contributions would be permitted for anyone with combined retirement plan balances exceeding $10 million and incomes above the thresholds.

Conversions of pre-tax retirement dollars to Roth retirement accounts will no longer be permitted for single-filer taxpayers with incomes exceeding the thresholds.

Converting after-tax retirement plan dollars into a Roth IRA would be prohibited (good-bye “back door” conversions).

Congress is looking to capture tax revenue from extraordinarily large retirement savings accounts by requiring 50% distributions of balances exceeding $10 million for taxpayers with incomes above the stated thresholds.

In spite of the legislative uncertainty, an experienced, knowledgeable wealth management professional can help you make the adjustments necessary to reach your goals effectively and efficiently.

And they should always consider the tax impact of financial decisions.

Always.

12/3/21 2:59 PM

8 DECEMBER 6, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

B of A’s former landlord may lose control of tower

BY DANNY ECKER The LaSalle Street landlord that recently lost Bank of America to a new tower on Wacker Drive is on the brink of losing control of the bank’s former downtown home, lining up what stands to be another big example of downtown office distress as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaks havoc on leasing.

The tower in question for New York-based AmTrust Realty is the 1.3 million-square-foot office building at 135 S. LaSalle St., where Bank of America’s lease for almost 830,000 square feet expired earlier this year. The bank’s long-anticipated exit gutted the building’s income and forced AmTrust to decide between holding onto the property in hopes of breathing new life into it or defaulting on its $100 million mortgage, which was packaged with other loans and sold off to commercial mortgage-backed securities investors.

Without Bank of America paying rent, the building’s annual net cash flow fell from almost $17 million in 2020 to well below the $3.3 million it owes annually for debt service, according to Bloomberg data tied to the loan.

AmTrust announced plans

last week to spend $100 million renovating its entire 6 millionsquare-foot portfolio of Loop office buildings to make them more competitive, including 135 S. LaSalle St. But the firm later issued a correction to that announcement, specifying that 135 S. LaSalle St. will not be part of that broader capital improvement plan.

STRATEGY

AmTrust President Jonathan Bennett, who took the reins at the firm in September, said in a statement that the firm is “engaging our lender in conversations focused on restructuring the capitalization of 135 S. LaSalle St.” as part of a broader strategy “to modernize and strengthen AmTrust Realty’s commercial property portfolio.”

But a source familiar with the firm’s strategy said AmTrust expects to default on making loan payments, triggering a process that will likely lead the firm to surrender the property to its lender through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.

Re-leasing the vacant space in the 87-year-old former Bank of America building might have been a tall order even before the pandemic, when demand for down-

DANNY ECKER

After losing anchor tenant Bank of America, AmTrust Realty is left with a cash flow shortfall at the bank’s former home on LaSalle Street

135 S. LaSalle St. town office space was at a record high. But the public health crisis has pushed companies to rethink their workspace needs, with many opting to cut back on space amid the rise of remote work. Downtown office vacancy is at a record high, making it even less likely that AmTrust would be able to find new users for the LaSalle Street building.

AmTrust bought the building from Bank of America through a $188 million sale-leaseback transaction in 2008, financing that deal with a $100 million loan, according to Cook County property records.

Almost seven years later, AmTrust refinanced the property with the current $100 million mortgage, though the building’s appraised value at the time had jumped to $330 million, according to prop-

erty records and Bloomberg data tied to the loan.

Wells Fargo is listed as a trustee for bondholders in the 135 S. LaSalle St. CMBS loan. New Yorkbased Torchlight Investors is listed in Bloomberg data as the special servicer, a group hired to oversee the troubled loan. Neither group could be reached for comment.

DEPARTURES

AmTrust isn’t the only LaSalle Street landlord losing its massive anchor tenant. BMO Harris Bank next year will follow Bank of America’s lead and leave behind more than 800,000 square feet in adjacent buildings at 200 W. Adams St., 111 W. Monroe St. and 115 S. LaSalle St. for a new namesake tower next to Union Station. The second-largest tenant in the Mon-

roe and LaSalle buildings, law firm Chapman & Cutler, is also moving to the new tower.

Those departures could leave a venture of Seoul-based Samsung Life Insurance with few options as it grapples with its own loan payments.

If AmTrust defaults on its 135 S. LaSalle St. loan, it would add to a recent run of distress among prominent downtown office buildings with big blocks of vacancy. The owners of office buildings at 65 E. Wacker Place and 300 W. Adams St. recently transferred their buildings to lenders rather than facing a foreclosure process.

The owner of the Civic Opera Building, meanwhile, was recently hit with a $195 million foreclosure lawsuit, the biggest case of downtown office distress in years.

What will this vacant River North landmark be next?

BY ALBY GALLUN The owner of the Medinah Temple is wrestling once again with the question: What’s the vacant River North landmark going to be next?

Friedman Properties seemed to have an answer in April, when it disclosed plans to open a retail, food and entertainment bazaar in the four-story River North building. But Chicago-based Friedman, which bought the Medinah Temple in 2019, is again seeking tenants for the property, signaling the demise of that idea.

The entire 138,000-square-foot building at 600 N. Wabash Ave. is available for lease, according to a brochure from retail brokerage ARC Real Estate Group, which is marketing the space. Executives at ARC and Friedman did not return several calls.

Filling a big space won’t be easy in a downtown retail real estate

P008_CCB_20211206.indd 8

market struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Few retailers or restaurants are expanding these days. Many, including Gap, Macy’s and Uniqlo, have closed stores on North Michigan Avenue, the city’s biggest shopping corridor, which has a 26% vacancy rate, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

The Medinah Temple is just two blocks west of the Magnificent Mile.

RENOVATION

Built by the Shriners in 1912, the Medinah Temple stands out in Chicago with its Moorish Revival design and large copper onion domes on its rooftop. The building, which originally included a large auditorium with seating for about 4,200 people, fell into disrepair in the late 1990s but was saved from demolition when the city designated it a landmark in 2001.

Friedman then orchestrated a major renovation of the entire

block, including the Tree Studios to the west of the temple, assisted by $12 million in tax-increment financing from the city. The developer sold the building to Federated Department Stores, which opened a Bloomingdale’s Home Store there in 2003, but Friedman retained ownership of the land underneath it.

By 2019, Bloomingdale’s new parent, Macy’s, decided to close the store and put the building up for sale. Friedman paid about $25 million for the structure in 2019 but didn’t offer any specific plans for it at the time.

In April, the developer disclosed its decision to team up with Chicago-based Blue Star Properties to bring a rotating mix of shops, food, drinks and events to the building, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Called Holocene Chicago, the emporium would run as a one-year pop-up, with the possibility of a

COSTAR GROUP

After hatching plans this year to open a retail, food and entertainment bazaar in the Medinah Temple, Friedman Properties is marketing the entire 138,000-square-foot building for lease, a sign that it’s moving on.

The Medinah Temple building, 600 N. Wabash Ave. longer-term run.

But the decision to market the entire building for lease is a clear sign that Friedman is moving on.

An executive at Blue Star, one of the firms redeveloping the big Morton Salt warehouse on the North Side, did not respond to requests for comment.

The ARC brochure doesn’t spec-

ify potential uses for the Medinah Temple. It could offer potential beyond retail, with options including co-working or boutique office space, or some entertainment concept new to the city. But converting the building to another use would require an investment that could easily stretch into the tens of millions of dollars.

12/3/21 1:23 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • DECEMBER 6, 2021 9

United Airlines moving some staff to Arlington Heights United Airlines plans to move the network operations center that coordinates its flights globally to Arlington Heights next year, slashing headcount at the carrier’s world headquarters at Blackstone’s Willis Tower.

The move was announced internally on Dec. 2 and would affect about 900 employees such as managers and technical support staff, United said. About 400 flight dispatchers could eventually join them. The airline is in contract talks with their union, whose collective bargaining agreement requires that they be based at Willis, according to Craig Symons, the union’s leader.

Another 2,500 headquarters staffers will continue to work at the iconic skyscraper formerly known as Sears Tower, where United is plowing millions of dollars into renovations.

That’s “roughly the same number of employees we had in the city 10 years ago,” company spokesman Charlie Hobart said by email.

“In terms of whether United is considering moving its headquarters out of downtown, the answer is no. We remain committed to the city of Chicago.”

The airline plans to make a new complex in Arlington Heights its primary nerve center effective April 1, with Willis serving as a backup,

according to David Kensick, United’s managing director of global operations. United closed a deal last week to purchase the property at 1501 W. Shure Drive in the northwest suburb, which had played a supporting role since it was opened last year by providing socially distant workstations for staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A United spokesman declined to disclose how much the company paid for the 200,000-square-foot property, but a source familiar with the agreement said the purchase price was likely more than $50 million. United bought the single-story building from a venture

of Northbrook-based investor Torburn Partners, which had owned the building since acquiring it in 2013 as part of a broader $28 million sale-leaseback deal with Finnish telecom giant Nokia Siemens.

Torburn in 2018 sold off a neighboring office at 1421 Shure Drive for nearly $41 million.

A Torburn spokeswoman declined to comment on the United sale.

Kensick said it became apparent during the pandemic that the expansive floor plan in the Arlington Heights building allowed for “better communication and collaboration” among workers than at Willis

Tower and provided ample space for the airline to expand its operations center as it grows and adds more flight dispatchers.

United’s previous backup operations center was at its former headquarters building in Elk Grove Village. Kensick said that location formally shut down in July.

The decision to move the primary operations center to the suburbs comes as many office towers in Chicago’s business district are partially filled and struggling to recover from the pandemic and last year’s social unrest.

Bloomberg News; Crain’s Danny Ecker contributed.

GREISING GREISING from Page 2 Chicago’s arenas.

This is hardly a trifling matter.

The city has one chance to get its casino right. And while Bluhm may well be exaggerating to serve his own interests, he just might be spot-on. And if that’s the case, the sooner the city knows, and acts on the information, the better for all concerned.

Lightfoot can hardly afford to lose a bet that Bluhm is wrong. Instead, she could consider hedging the city’s position.

Under current plans, Chicago will charge the arena operators a mere $50,000 for a sportsbook license: That’s one-half of 1% of the state’s fee. Surely a sportsbook license at the Cell is worth more than that.

There also is no city tax on sportsbooks. The state will charge the arena-based sportsbooks 15% on the sports betting revenue they take in. Even Cook County takes 2%. Could Chicago have its own levy?

Lightfoot should not just shrug off Bluhm’s warnings in order to meet her self-imposed December deadline. Instead, she should devote a week or two to crunching Bluhm’s numbers, and any others available, then making a more informed decision about the risks, if any, to the city’s casino. It’s concerning that she is prepared to move forward, even though a full analysis of the impact of sportsbooks on the Chicago casino from city consultants Union Gaming is not yet complete, my reporting shows.

If Chicago gets this wrong, the economic and reputational damage could be substantial.

What we have here is a public-policy poker game, and Lightfoot has cards she can play. With a small measure of careful analysis, including open-minded inquiry into Bluhm’s claims, she can get this right.

The city has no good reason to proceed based only on a hunch and a prayer.

David Greising is president and CEO of the Chicago-based investigative watchdog Better Government Association.

P009_CCB_20211206.indd 9

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12/3/21 3:23 PM

10 DECEMBER 6, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

H EDITORIAL

fter enduring a COVID-lockeddown Christmas last year, holiday shoppers are in the mood to hit the stores again in person—and that’s great news, particularly for retailers up and down Chicago’s key retail corridors: North Michigan Avenue and State Street. Indeed, Chicagoans and visitors alike can be seen right now taking in the window displays at Macy’s and toting colorful American Girl bags from Water Tower Place.

Just underneath the scenes of cheer, however, is a less-familiar vibe: an awareness that shoplifters, an ever-present fact of life for retailers year-round, are out in force, and that a lively store full of shoppers can turn into a scene of panic and mayhem very quickly.

Organized retail theft—in which throngs of people descend on a store in a coordinated way, grab as much as they can carry, and flee, often while breaking glass, overturning displays and generally scaring the living daylights out of customers and clerks alike—has become more commonplace in Chicago and beyond.

As Crain’s Ally Marotti reports in this week’s issue, dollars lost to organized retail crime nationally topped $700,000 per $1 billion in sales in 2020, up nearly 60% since 2015, according to a recent National Retail Federation report. In Illinois, shops lost $3.7 billion to $4 billion worth of merchandise to theft last year, according to the Illinois Retail Merchants Association. Retailers also note that thieves are becoming more audacious, and that the higher demand for online goods brought on by the pandemic has fueled an increase in this type of smash-and-grab crime.

BLOOMBERG

A

Smash mobs are everybody’s problem

To make shoppers feel more secure— and keep them coming out to the shops instead of opting for the convenience and safety of e-commerce—retailers are walking a tightrope: hiring more security staffers while trying not to create the sensation that customers are perusing the merchandise inside an armed camp.

Crain’s columnist Joe Cahill notes that retailers aren’t the only ones who suffer the loss of revenue when smash mobs strike.

Government coffers are drained of tax revenue as well. But even greater than that,

perhaps, is the hit that the city’s reputation takes every time security-camera video of an organized retail theft airs on the 10 o’clock news or goes viral on social media.

To be sure, Chicago is not the only city experiencing the smash mob phenomenon right now. But the uptick in this activity comes against the backdrop of the city’s already well-publicized problem with violence in general. Murders are up 59% compared with 2019. Shooting incidents are up 67%.

Cite those numbers anywhere in the

vicinity of Mayor Lori Lightfoot or anyone on her staff and they will quickly and pointedly note that Chicago is just one of several major U.S. metros grappling with an uptick in crime since the pandemic began. They’re not wrong. But knowing that someone in, say, Nashville or Kansas City is being carjacked at the same time that you’re being carjacked here in Chicago doesn’t exactly take the sting out of the experience. When asked in a recent podcast interview what sort of feedback the Lightfoot administration is getting from corporate Chicago on the crime situation, Deputy Mayor Samir Mayekar went so far as to tell Crain’s A.D. Quig: “What we’re hearing . . . is a huge appreciation of engagement.”

Engagement is one thing. Results are another. On the crime front, Chicago needs more of both.

At least when it comes to smash mobs, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul may have struck on a fruitful response, forming a multijurisdictional task force in September that aims to treat these outbreaks not as isolated incidents but as part of a broader pattern of organized crime.

On Dec. 3, he announced that millions of dollars’ worth of stolen goods had been recovered at several storage units in Chicago, the first major bust as a result of the task force’s efforts to link city and suburban law enforcement with retailers to tackle the problem.

Those finds probably represent only a slice of the ill-gotten gains these criminal gangs and their organizers have reaped this holiday season, but it’s at least a tangible first step toward making shoppers— and the retailers who love them—feel a little more secure.

I

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found 7%, or 17,500, of the 250,000 complaints resulted in discipline, for an average of 583 per year. Again, this number is higher than desirable, but it neither differentiates between more- and less-serious transgressions, nor factors in the sheer volume of police interactions with the public.

According to the Office of the Inspector General website, there were 1,270,951 dispatched 911 calls for police service for the year 2018, a figure that does not even include police-initiated contact.

Based on this data (1.27 million contacts vs. 875 sustained complaints), there is a 0.07% chance that an officer will get a sustained complaint on any given call.

Few professions are more heavily monitored or investigated than that of police officer. Today, CPD officers can be investigated internally and by two independent entities, not including numerous

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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Fanning the flames of distrust two words—“No comment”—to those of the impugned officers. As far as Burge is concerned, he was fired 28 years ago.

Many officers were children or not yet born then.

The article goes on to cite the Invisible Institute’s database of nearly 250,000 complaints filed against Chicago police officers over a 30-year period from 1988-2018. It sounds like a big number, and it is. Everyone should want to see that number reduced. Regrettably, other numbers worthy of your readers’ consideration were omitted.

Those 250,000 complaints over 30 years equates to an annual average of 8,333. During this period, there were, on average, approximately 12,500 sworn CPD officers in any given year. This works out to well under one complaint per officer per year.

Analysis by the Invisible Institute

se tr b ge th er

Gene and

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

am surprised and concerned that Crain’s would publish such a one-sided article, “Violations of Trust” (Crain’s Forum, Oct. 25). The article’s lack of balance fosters distrust between police and the public at a time when perspective and mutual understanding is badly needed.

Crain’s employed common media tactics in the piece. Citing a sensational case or invoking the name of former Cmdr. Jon Burge have become formulaic pathways to indicting an entire department: The publication reaches out to the Chicago Police Department and CPD declines to comment, as the publication knows it will. This fulfills the publication’s obligations and creates an impression of fairness, but it also gives a tremendous advantage to reporters who can then devote as many words as they like to one point of view and only

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Mark

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governmental agencies. Consider, too, how easy it is to file a complaint against an officer. There are no repercussions for filing false complaints, and many complainants have strong motivation (such as avoiding potential criminal charges or imprisonment) for doing so. Despite all of this, the percentage of complaints that are sustained is nominal.

Police officers have been entrusted with enormous responsibilities and the tools with which to carry out their duties. They absolutely should be held accountable for wrongdoing. However, it is not helpful to erode trust between the Chicago Police Department and its constituency with disingenuous reporting intended to fan the flames of distrust.

WILLIAM CONDON President, Chicago Police Memorial Foundation

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

12/3/21 4:23 PM

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CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • DECEMBER 6, 2021 11

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Continued How to deal with EV range anxiety?

Thank you for the article on electric vehicle adoption in Illinois (“Here’s the key to EV adoption in Illinois,” Nov. 19). As stated, it is important to expand EV charging stations in Illinois to meet Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s goals for EV adoption. To address a question noted in the article, how we would deal with range anxiety going from Rockford to Carbondale: The answer is EV education. There are several key misunderstandings about electric vehicles and EV charging that must be explained to potential buyers. Dealers generally do a poor job of explaining these things to buyers, so the population generally assumes if they don’t see charging

stations, they don’t exist. So let’s deal with the central question in the article, traveling from Rockford to Carbondale.

In the world of internal combustion engine vehicles, gas stations are numerous and well advertised. In the world of EVs, charging stations are not marketed. The chargers are generally located in remote sections of large parking lots, such as at Walmart stores. EV drivers locate charging stations with their car’s navigation system or with phone apps such as PlugShare or A Better Routeplanner.

For the trip from Rockford to Carbondale, there are 36 charging stations on the route. Three of these locations have a total of 25 charging plugs and these are the best type of chargers for trips: DC fast chargers.

The trip is 354 miles and my EV range is 250 miles. Therefore, I need to stop at one charger to complete the trip and the app tells me what my battery level will be when arriving at that charger. It tells me about two other DC fast-charging stations if needed.

A Better Routeplanner understands my car’s charging speed and it tells me how long I need to charge before I depart. In this case, I need to charge for about an hour.

During the charging time, I will likely shop or have lunch at one of the restaurants the app recommends near the charging station. A Better Routeplanner tells me the walking distance to each location.

While EVs are driven much like any other car, much more education is key from

automakers, dealers, EV educators and governments to help with the transition. As mentioned in the article, the EV czar who will be appointed by Pritzker and the beneficial electrification process defined by the Climate & Equitable Jobs Act will be key to propelling EVs forward. We do need more DC fast-charging stations along highways and slower speed (level 2) chargers for apartments and low-income locations. But even what we already have today is simply not well understood by most people. Education is key to EV success.

TOM COLEMAN EV team leader, Climate Reality Leadership Corps Naperville

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

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Ray Curry, facilities manager for Saint Joseph Medical Center, discusses energy-saving upgrades with a Nicor Gas representative.

T

he 24/7 operational complexities of hospitals are associated with significant energy consumption. The energy use intensity (energy per square foot), or EUI, of a hospital is more than four times that of a typical commercial building. High energy use also means high energy costs— according to the Premier Safety Institute, 3% of a hospital’s total operating budget can be attributed to energy. Without energy-efficient building systems, hospitals could waste millions of dollars a year.

One organization that is trying to stay ahead of these costs is OSF HealthCare—it is implementing strategic energy efficiency projects throughout its footprint to reduce overall energy use. OSF HealthCare is an integrated health system owned and operated by The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis based in Peoria, Ill. Operating 15 hospitals and hundreds of outpatient clinics and medical office buildings, environmental stewardship is integral to OSF HealthCare’s commitment to transformative healthcare and improving the lives of those they serve.

“Our mission is to serve with the greatest care and love.

That includes promoting health and well-being,” said Michael Keefe, manager of energy and sustainability for OSF. “Healthy people, in our view, require a healthy environment. It’s that simple.”

Since 2019, through the completion of more than 100 energy conservation projects, OSF has reduced the aggregate EUI of its hospitals by 3.3%, saving $1.3 million per year in energy costs and reducing greenhouse gases by 14,800 tons of equivalent carbon dioxide per year.

OSF supports an energy and sustainability program that identifies and implements opportunities to reduce environmental impacts associated with energy and water consumption, waste generation, and purchasing medical and other supplies. However, making the change to more efficient operations required a wholesale look at the needs of all buildings across the OSF system.

“OSF has been taking care of people in Illinois for more than 144 years,” Keefe said. “Many of our hospitals have implemented multiple additions or renovations with available control technology.

Over time, you can end up with a very fragmented set of building HVAC controls. It feels like you’re taking care of three different buildings all at the same address.”

The healthcare organization began its journey by looking at easy ways to save through facility assessments and projects that would provide quick paybacks.

From there, they began looking into more long-term ways they could save energy and money.

“Capital funds used for infrastructure improvements are limited,” said Joshua Meade, regional director of facilities planning and operations for OSF Healthcare. “Being good stewards of these funds, along with reduced energy use and operating costs, drives additional opportunities for future investment.”

Partnering with the Nicor Gas Energy Efficiency Program team, Keefe and his colleagues sought to create a standardized method of controlling equipment within their facilities. They implemented the first phase of a building automation system (BAS) upgrade at the OSF HealthCare Saint Joseph Medical Center in Bloomington, Ill., and are expecting to save $47,500 per year in natural gas and electric costs. Phase two will expand to include heating systems for even greater natural gas savings when completed in 2022.

“We’re controlling a multitude of system components ranging from water and steam valves, air flow volume, temperature, humidity—the list goes on,” Meade said. “We’re continually looking at live data points. For instance, take our operating rooms. If we see relative humidity in the room start to reach the lower or upper limits required by regulatory standards, we can gradually adjust the controls to keep the room

within those parameters. Knowing that we’re providing a very stable environment for our patients and surgeons and having constant control of this environment in real time has been a huge success.”

Meade further explained other BAS energy savings benefits.

“While a hospital is operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we have spaces within the hospital, medical office buildings, and clinics that are not. These spaces are controlled in a mode that keeps temperature in the space at a set point year round. We know there are energy savings from scheduled setbacks on nights and weekends when the spaces are unoccupied.

Full integration of the BAS allows us to set these schedules and adjust temperatures in real time, resulting in energy savings.”

For other organizations looking into starting efficiency projects, Keefe said that all it takes is that first step.

“Every program has a process,” Keefe said. “Don’t let the process impede your progress working with the Nicor Gas Energy Efficiency Program team, because I can attest that it’s worth it. Utilize the full spectrum of the program’s offerings from assessments, to trade ally support, to rebates. Just ask what the savings opportunities are, and Nicor Gas will go to great lengths to find a custom solution that will improve your organization’s energy consumption and operations.”

For more information on commercial energy efficiency opportunities, visit nicorgas.com/ bizsavings.

cation

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12/3/21 4:23 PM

SPONSORED CONTENT

Chicago’s 2022 MEETING & EVENT PLANNING GUIDE W

elcome to the latest edition of Crain’s Content Studio’s Meeting and Event Planning Guide, showcasing a cross-section of the city’s myriad venue offerings and event services providers. While events may look different as we move into 2022, in-person meetings and entertaining events are back on executives’ calendars.

Our feature story highlights the trends and innovative ways venues have adapted to keep attendees safe and accommodating of a variety of comfort levels. As you are making plans for your company’s events for the upcoming year – we hope you’ll peruse these unique listings which include both boutique and large-scale venues in the Chicago area and suburbs, and event service providers from catering to event planning, video production and more.

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12/2/21 9:02 AM

Face-to-face Corporate Events Make a Cautious Comeback

BY JANE ADLER

THE CHOPPING BLOCK

A

fter a long hiatus, in-person meetings are finally back on the business calendar. But meeting planners and their corporate partners are taking it slow, especially with the recent uptick in COVID-19 cases and the uncertain course of the virus over the winter.

The reality is that people are eager to gather again.

Corporate get-togethers for now tend to be small and often confined to internal teams. However, some big conferences are back in session usually with proof of vaccination required.

McCormick Place is hosting conferences with health protocols in place. Large events now include more networking time, making up for that lost personal contact.

“People are ready to come back,” says Lorelei Kroulaidis,

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CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM director of special events at the Chicago History Museum.

It recently held a luncheon and tour for 50 corporate guests.

“People were so happy to be together,” she adds.

An emerging trend is the hybrid meeting, a combination of live participants and virtual attendees. The formula is proving so successful that planners expect the trend to grow, eventually becoming a standard option.

Of course, safety still comes first. Meeting planners and companies don’t want anyone to get sick. Local venues are careful to follow health guidelines to keep everyone safe and comfortable, including their staff.

“We work with clients,” says Shelley Young, founder and CEO at The Chopping Block. It offers private

cooking events at its facilities at the Merchandise Mart, and Lincoln Square. “We work to ensure the safety of our staff and guests,” she adds. “That’s what I care about.”

It’s estimated that the pandemic has cost the meeting industry about $211 billion, according to data from Tourism Economics and the U.S. Travel Association. Chicago’s convention business took a hit of about $1 billion.

The industry is not expected to hit pre-COVID revenue numbers until 2023 or 2024, according to Meeting Professionals International, a trade association.

Plans stay flexible

The shifting nature of the pandemic presents a challenge for companies, planners and venues eager to hold in-person events.

Everyone is trying to figure out what works, what’s safe and how to make attendees feel comfortable.

Meeting planners face the added challenge of arranging events for companies with locations nationwide. States and cities have a range of different restrictions. Some places have lax rules and others are strict. Many companies have their own internal rules about what is allowed.

“Corporate events are a bit all over the place,” Young says.

Some companies feel it’s OK to hold an in-person event, with a limited number of people and restrictions in place. Others just aren’t ready yet.

In general, face-to-face corporate events may include as many as about 50 people. Masks are required, except during mealtime. Many companies are requiring proof of vaccination to attend even small in-person events.

“The priority for companies is to get their internal teams together,” says Heather Brown, regional general manager at PRA Business Events, a meeting planning company in Chicago. Corporate get togethers are less likely to include outside clients to keep groups small.

At the outset of the pandemic, meeting planners pivoted to virtual only meetings. The Chopping Block, for example, saw its virtual event business take off over the last 18 months.

Meetings with a live and online component are growing in popularity. “Hybrid events are a cool opportunity,” Young says.

The Chopping Block can accommodate from 20-50 people for the in-person cooking experience at its Merchandise Mart location. The number of virtual attendees can range from 50-300 people. The advantage of an online component is that companies can include employees or clients from anywhere in the world, extending the reach of the experience.

Hybrid meetings increase costs. Planners must consider both in-person and online audiences. Streaming the live content isn’t enough, according to PRA’s Brown. “You are really planning two meetings.”

Meeting planners expect venues to have the technology to support hybrid events.

Looking ahead, meeting planners think business will pick up more quickly next spring. By then, they hope the pandemic will mostly under be control. “We’ve learned how to adapt and pivot,” Kroulaidis at the Chicago History Museum says. “We’re ready for the opportunity.”

12/2/21 9:02 AM

SPONSORED CONTENT

THE DAWSON

VENUES

Neighborhood: West Town 730 W. Grand Avenue 312-372-4001 events@gagehospitality.com Max capacity reception (standing): 300 Max capacity banquet (seated): 250 the-dawson.com

ACANTO RESTAURANT + WINE BAR Neighborhood: Loop 18 S. Michigan Avenue 312-372-4001 events@gagehospitality.com Max capacity reception (standing): 120 Max capacity banquet (seated): 75 acantochicago.com

CHICAGO’S FIRST LADY

Neighborhood: Magnificent Mile 112 E. Wacker Drive 847-358-1330 chartersales@cruisechicago.com Max capacity reception (standing): 250 Max capacity banquet (seated): 250 cruisechicago.com/private-events

CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM Neighborhood: Lincoln Park 1601 N. Clark Street 312-799-2254 events@chicagohistory.org Max capacity reception (standing): 500 Max capacity banquet (seated): 340 chicagohistory.org/corporate-events

Sip cocktails next to one of Chicago’s first “L” cars. Dance the night away against a backdrop of Lincoln Park’s lush gardens and the glittering lights of the city skyline. Tucked along the grounds of Lincoln Park, steps from the lake and a short cab ride from downtown, the Chicago History Museum offers a variety of spaces that can be used for corporate events, daytime meetings, cocktail receptions, reunions, or just about any type of event.

Dazzle your guests with a fabulous private yacht party amongst Chicago’s glittering skyscrapers and take in skyline views along our spectacular lakefront. Whether you’re planning a private corporate event or Chicago dinner cruise, Chicago’s First Lady Cruises work with you to make it truly memorable. And with countless safe and delectable catering options, your event is sure to be an unforgettable one for all of your guests.

CARNIVALE RESTAURANT

Neighborhood: West Loop 702 W. Fulton Market 312-850-5005 sales@carnivalechicago.com Max capacity reception (standing): 1,200 Max capacity banquet (seated): 850 carnivalechicago.com

THE CHOPPING BLOCK

Neighborhood: River North 222 Merchandise Mart Plaza Suite 107 parties@thechoppingblock.com Max capacity reception (standing): 200 Max capacity banquet (seated): 110 thechoppingblock.com/parties

The Chopping Block is the leader in culinary education mixed with entertainment, a recipe for a fun and memorable experience! With two locations in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart and Lincoln Square plus virtual and hybrid event options, we accommodate a wide range of private cooking events such as team building competitions, unique networking or client entertainment, holiday parties, wine tastings or other celebratory milestones. We bring people together over food and wine wherever you may be!

AUDITORIUM THEATRE

Neighborhood: South Loop 50 E. Ida B Wells Drive 312-341-2334 rentals@auditoriumtheatre.org Max capacity (seated in theatre): 3,875 Max capacity reception (standing): 1,000 auditoriumtheatre.org/the-building/ rent-the-auditorium

A (RETRACTABLE) ROOM WITH A VIEW!

CHICAGO NORTH SHORE CONVENTION BUREAU Neighborhood: North Suburbs 8833 Gross Point Road, Suite 307, Skokie, 60077 847-763-0011 ext. 123 kwright@cnscvb.com visitchicagonorthshore.com

Bordering Chicago along Lake Michigan, Chicago’s North Shore offers the unique venues for small to mid-sized events in an area known for its natural beauty, food scene and culture. Easy access to Downtown Chicago and Interstates and O’Hare International Airport with free parking, state-of-the-art facilities and expert, personalized planning care delivered by our staff to assist you in designing an outstanding meeting or event.

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Introducing the ne w four-season convertable rooftop at Chicago’s most versatile events venue

MORGAN’S ON FULTON FEATURES In do o r / o u t do o r ex per i en ces a t t h e pu s h o f a bu tt o n

MorgansOnFulton.com

A pr i m e Fu l t o n M a rket l o ca t i o n with pa n o ra m i c ci t y v i ews

M ultip le levels of flex ib le sp a c e for m eeting s or p a r ties

312 374 3686

I n- house c a ter ing a nd fur niture inc lud ed for tur nkey p la nning

info@morgansonfulton.com

12/2/21 11:23 AM

VENUES

State-of-the-art meeting facilities in unique spaces raise the level of your event.

Personalized service to fit your meeting needs in space close to after-hours experiences can be sourced by contacting Kimberly Wright, CMP at kwright@cnscvb.com

find your unique venue at visitchicagonorthshore.com/ meetingspace

THE GERAGHTY

Neighborhood: Pilsen 2520 S. Hoyne Avenue 312-967-2520 info@thegeraghty.com Max capacity reception (standing): 1,200+ Max capacity banquet (seated): 1,000 thegeraghty.com

THE DALCY

north of ordinary

Neighborhood: West Loop 302 N. Green Street, Third Floor 773-645-1430 dalcyevents@leye.com Max capacity reception (standing): 500 Max capacity banquet (seated): 300 thedalcy.com

The Dalcy is a private event hall located in the historic Fulton Market District in Chicago.

Sharing its kitchen with Aba, a Mediterranean restaurant, the 6,000 square foot meeting space and 4,000 square foot rooftop patio is the ideal setting for corporate meetings, conferences, and events. Elevate your next event with designer linens, tables, dining chairs, a state-of-the-art sound system, A/V capabilities, and more.

THE GAGE

Neighborhood: Loop 24 S. Michigan Avenue 312-372-4001 events@gagehospitality.com Max capacity reception (standing): 150 Max capacity banquet (seated): 80 thegagechicago.com

HOUSE OF BLUES CHICAGO

Neighborhood: River North 329 N. Dearborn Street 312-923-7061 kristinatlas@livenation.com Max capacity reception (standing): 1,800 Max capacity banquet (seated) 400 specialevents.livenation.com/hobchicago

House of Blues offers the perfect location to host your next corporate event, business meeting, private concert, social gathering, reception or private dinner. House of Blues Chicago accommodates 25 to 1,800 guests.

With access to the world’s greatest musical entertainment, state-of-the-art lighting and sound, custom menus and mixology, this epic 55,000 square-foot entertainment fourlevel space is comprised of three distinctive environments including a VIP Foundation Room, Restaurant & Bar and a spectacular multi-story Music Hall.

From breakfast meetings and intimate dinners, to cocktail receptions and office catering, 4 Star Restaurant Group has your private dining and catering needs covered.

events@4srg.com

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catering@4srg.com

12/2/21 9:02 AM

SPONSORED CONTENT

ILLINOIS HOLOCAUST MUSEUM & EDUCATION CENTER

KOI FINE ASIAN CUISINE & LOUNGE Neighborhood: North Suburbs 624 Davis Street, Evanston, 60201 847-866-6969 events@koievanston.com Max capacity reception (standing): 100 Max capacity banquet (seated:) 70 koievanston.com

Neighborhood: Northwest Suburbs 9603 Woods Drive, Skokie, 60077 847-967-4800 grouptours@ilhmec.org Max capacity reception (standing): 100 Max capacity banquet (seated): 200 ilholocaustmuseum.org

MARRIOTT LINCOLNSHIRE RESORT Neighborhood: North Suburbs 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire, 60069 847-634-0100 sales@chicagomarriottlincolnshire.com Max capacity reception (standing): 1,300 Max capacity banquet (seated): 950 chicagomarriottlincolnshire.com

LOFT606

Neighborhood: Logan Square 2605 W. Armitage Avenue 407-963-0242 411@humbledhospitality.com Max capacity reception (standing): 150 Max capacity banquet (seated): 150 loft606.com

Tay Kaune Photography

This gorgeous sun filled loft is unique as they come. Former factory converted to a luxury home equipped with a 26’ timber beamed ceiling, skylights running throughout, massive gourmet kitchen with state of the art appliances, and sleeping space for 20+.

A truly one-of-a-kind space that creates an indescribable environment for personal and business connections while also providing private space when desired.

Marriott Lincolnshire’s Golf & Entertainment Resort is located on 175+ acres of open space and home to the renowned Marriott Theatre.

Whether you’re hosting 1,000 guests for an organizational meeting, a lavish banquet, holiday party or a smaller board meeting, retreat or reunion, we have the indoor & outdoor space for your group. Over 45,000 sq.ft. of meeting & event space, including 30 function rooms and three outdoor pavilions; ideal for any unique & personalized Chicagoarea event.

KIMPTON GRAY HOTEL

Neighborhood: Loop 122 W. Monroe Street 312-750-9012 sales@grayhotelchicago.com Max capacity reception (standing): 350 Max capacity banquet (seated): 200 grayhotelchicago.com/event-space-chicago

MORGAN’S ON FULTON

Neighborhood: West Loop 950 W. Fulton Market 312-374-3686 info@morgansonfulton.com Max capacity reception (standing): 650 Max capacity banquet (seated): 420 morgansonfulton.com Morgan’s on Fulton offers everything you need to host an unforgettable Chicago event. Located in the heart of the flashy Fulton Market district, Morgan’s features inhouse catering, contemporary design and furnishings, and now, a fully retractable glass enclosed rooftop with panoramic city views for all-season entertaining. Whether it’s for a meeting or a party, Morgan’s on Fulton delivers unparalleled private event options with four levels of unique and flexible space.

History, inspired.

Steps from the lake, nestled in the Gold Coast, the Chicago History Museum is the perfect location for large staff meetings, presentations in a cinema quality theater, intimate collaborations, and lively cocktail receptions.

Clark & North | chicagohistory.org 312.799.2254 | events@chicagohistory.org

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SPONSORED CONTENT

LE SUD MEDITERRANEAN KITCHEN Neighborhood: Roscoe Village 2301 W. Roscoe Street 773-857-1985 events@lesudchicago.com Max capacity reception (standing): 70 Max capacity banquet (seated): 50 lesudchicago.com

SNAKES & LATTES CHICAGO Neighborhood: Logan Square 1965 N. Milwaukee Avenue 872-310-3999 chicago@snakesandlattes.com Max capacity reception (standing): 198 Max capacity banquet (seated): 166 snakesandlattes.com

PEPPER FAMILY WILDLIFE CENTER Neighborhood: Lincoln Park 2021 N. Stockton Drive 773-571-0404 groupsales@lpzoo.org Max capacity reception (standing): 500 Max capacity banquet (seated): 400 lpzoo.org/private-events

Lincoln Park Zoo’s newly renovated Pepper Family Wildlife Center is home to some wild event space! The historic Great Hall, built in 1912, is just over 7,000 sq. ft. and can accommodate up to 400 seated/500 reception. The 1,100 sq. ft. conference room (80 seated/100 reception), located just off the Great Hall, is perfect for everything from birthdays to board meetings. It features floor to ceiling windows facing the lion’s habitat and state-of-the-art AV capabilities.

Eat, drink, and play games in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. Hold your next party, team building event, client meeting, or holiday get together at Snakes & Lattes Chicago. Choose from over 500 board games to play while dining or mingling throughout their picturesque indoor Spanish courtyard or one of four uniquely themed dining rooms.

From individual private dining spaces to full restaurant buyouts, they can accommodate groups of up to 198 people.

STATION RESTAURANT AND BAR Neighborhood: West Loop 120 N. Canal Street 312-902-1111 info@stationchicago.com Max capacity reception (standing): 300 Max capacity banquet (seated): 120 stationchicago.com

WALDORF ASTORIA CHICAGO Neighborhood: Gold Coast 11 E. Walton Street 312-646-1324 chiwa-salesadm@waldorfastoria.com Max capacity reception (standing): 230 Max capacity banquet (seated): 200 waldorfastoriachicagohotel.com

With True Waldorf Service and a dedicated team at your fingertips, Waldorf Astoria Chicago is the perfect setting for unforgettable meetings and events in Chicago’s Gold Coast. Discover charming venues influenced by literary icons, Parisian style and 1920s design. Our event spaces offer opulent furnishings and bold artwork alongside modern business amenities. Hilton EventReady with CleanStay delivers event experiences that provide peace of mind from start to finish.

WEBER GRILL RESTAURANT & GRILL ACADEMY

Neighborhood: Locations in Chicago, Schaumburg and Lombard 312-467-0574 eshovlin@thewebergrill.com Max capacity reception (standing): 250 Max capacity banquet (seated): 200 webergrillrestaurant.com

SERVICES & PROVIDERS

REMINGTON’S

TINLEY PARK CONVENTION CENTER

Neighborhood: Loop 20 N. Michigan Avenue 312-952-6120 Max capacity reception (standing): 225 Max capacity banquet (seated): 48 remingtonschicago.com/#privatedining

Neighborhood: Southwest Suburbs 18451 Convention Center Drive, Tinley Park, 60477 708-342-5485 sales@eventpcc.com Max capacity reception (standing): 7,000 Max capacity banquet (seated): 2,000 tinleyparkconventioncenter.net

Turn to Remington’s to create a memorable experience for your upcoming event! Our venue can accommodate groups of 10 to 225 guests for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a cocktail reception in a variety of private and semi-private dining spaces. Whether you’re having an intimate gathering or a large corporate meeting, our sleek restaurant is the perfect spot to host your VIP guests in the heart of Chicago’s Millennium Park area.

The Tinley Park Convention Center features state-of-the-art, on-site guest accommodations at EVEN Hotel, as well as the latest technology, free parking and an experienced staff, making it ideal for a meeting of 10, banquet for 1,500 or expo of 5,000. With 11 first-class hotels and premier dining options nearby, there’s space to accommodate your event guests. Come and see the 10,000 square feet of possibilities - trade shows, banquets, fundraiser galas, weddings and more!

ROANOKE RESTAURANT

THEATER ON THE LAKE

Neighborhood: Loop 135 W. Madison Street Max capacity reception (standing): 300 Max capacity banquet (seated): 200 312-361-3800 cbane@roanokehospitality.com theroanokerestaurant.com/private-dining.html

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Neighborhood: Lincoln Park 2401 N. Lake Shore Drive 312-414-1313 info@theateronthelake.com Max capacity reception (standing): 1,000 Max capacity banquet (seated): 500 theateronthelake.com

BLACKOAK TECHNICAL PRODUCTIONS Event Service: Audio/Visual/Photography/ Videography 2555 S. Leavitt Street, Chicago, 60608 872-281-7700 hello@blackoak.tech blackoak.tech

We are a modern production company based in Chicago, IL, and working nationally.

Our team works relentlessly to be bold in our design and kind in our approach. As a proud member of the KEHOE DESIGNS family of brands, we have years of experience bringing a fresh approach to in-person, hybrid, and virtual events for corporate, social, and non-profit clients. Check out our portfolio: www.blackoak.tech.

12/2/21 9:02 AM

SPONSORED CONTENT

DICKEY’S BARBECUE PIT

Event service: Catering 2537 S. Wabash Avenue, Chicago, 60616 312-678-6965 il-1976@dickeysfranchise.com dickeys.com

KUMA’S CATERING

Event Service: Catering 852 W. Fulton Market, Chicago, 60607 312-666-9090 catering@kumascorner.com

CATERED BY DESIGN

Event Service: Catering 9204 Waukegan Road, Morton Grove, 60053 847-965-4094 info@cateredbydesign.com cateredbydesign.com

PIZZA CITY USA TOURS NAPERVILLE CONVENTION & VISITORS BUREAU

Catered By Design’s mission is to bring your events to life with sumptuous food and refreshing beverages presented in spectacular fashion. This also includes being a good steward of the environment. Our goal is to continually improve our sustainability practices by working closely with our vendors and partners to minimize the impact on the environment.

Event Service: Event Planning 22 E. Chicago Avenue, Suite 205, Naperville, 60540 630-305-7701 ncvb@naper.org visitnaperville.com

CATERING OUT THE BOX Event service: Catering 4300 W. Lake Street, Chicago, 60624 312-226-2601 cotb@me.com www.cateringoutthebox.com

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No matter your needs, no matter your goals, Naperville is your one-stop destination for your corporate meetings and events. Equipped with 18 hotels, and over 300 restaurants, you don’t have to worry about scouting the perfect location or finding the perfect place to eat. There’s everything from 4-star, full-service hotels, to extended stay locations, to cozy spots for small parties. Whatever you’re looking for, Naperville has what you need. Contact us at VisitNaperville.com for complementary services and more.

Event Service: Food tours 773-230-7157 amy@pizzacityusa.com pizzacityusa.com

How about a pizza tour or cocktail experience for your next event? Let 13-time James Beard Award winning journalist NBC Chicago’s Steve Dolinsky be your guide. Author of two books on pizza, Steve can either lead an inperson or a virtual experience, such as the History of Chicago Deep-Dish highlighted by pizzas delivered to each participant’s home anywhere in the country, ready to bake just in time for the one-hour event.

Chicago is welcoming back meetings, successfully! McCormick Place is the largest and most flexible convention center in the Western Hemisphere and with 2.6 million square feet of meeting and exhibit space we have always been #1 for adaptability.

C

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CMY

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Healthy Meetings are our priority. As one of the first to commit to GBAC STAR™ Accreditation, the entire campus, including five world-class hotels connected via skybridges and the 10,000-seat Wintrust Arena, are following the best practices and standards required by the independent, third-party validation. Explore the entire journey from flight to floor at HealthyMeetingsChicago.com.

With our amazing convention center, welcoming spirit, 77 diverse neighborhoods, and a rich array of meeting and event venues and partners, Chicago is the ideal destination for any meeting.

Scan the QR code to virtually tour McCormick Place.

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CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • DECEMBER 6, 2021 19

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE SHARE YOUR C O M PA N Y ’ S JOURNEY Feature your latest milestones, launches, partnerships, awards and more in Crain’s

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

ARCHITECTURE / DESIGN

CONSTRUCTION

LAW

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

FGM Architects, Chicago

W.E. O’Neil Construction, Chicago

Chuhak & Tecson, P.C., Chicago

BDO USA, LLP, Oak Brook

Tim Kwiatkowski, AIA, FGMA’s President, was honored as the “Architect of the Year” by the U.S. Minority Contractors Association (USMCA) Millennium Builders Award program. FGMA is a strategic partner to the USMCA and Tim is the VP of its Missouri chapter. “We fully support the mission & vision of the USMCA and believe in the power of diversity in our business and our world. One of FGMA’s key strategic goals is modeling diversity, equity and inclusion for the architectural community.” said Tim.

W.E. O’Neil Construction is pleased to welcome Vladimir Stevanovic as a Senior Project Executive in its growing healthcare and life sciences practices.

Stevanovic brings 22 years of construction industry expertise to the company, and has successfully led projects for clients such as Northwestern Medicine, University of Chicago Medicine, Rush University Medical Center, and Advocate Health Care, among others. The company looks forward to Stevanovic’s contributions to its continued growth.

Mallory A. Moreno joins the firm as a principal in the Estate & Trust Administration & Litigation and Estate Planning & Asset Protection groups, focusing on adult guardianships, estate and trust administration, litigation and fraud. Her practice also includes long-term care and special needs planning, Medicaid, Medicaid appeals and disability law. She is a Certified Elder Law Attorney, an exclusive honor awarded by the National Elder Law Foundation. In 2021, there are only 17 CELAs in Illinois.

BDO USA, LLP has named Rich Lamorena a Principal in the firm’s Advisory practice. Lamorena is co-leader of BDO Digital’s Data Analytics practice, leading a team with decades of experience in analytics implementation, including data architecture, data engineering, predictive analytics and data exploration/visualization. Under his leadership, the practice has delivered impactful solutions across industries.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES BDO USA, LLP, Chicago

For more information, contact Debora Stein at dstein@crain.com or submit directly to

CHICAGOBUSINESS.COM/ COMPANYMOVES

FINANCIAL SERVICES

LAW

CONSTRUCTION

Lakeshore Financial Group, Chicago

Nixon Peabody, LLP, Chicago

Executive Construction, Chicago

Lakeshore Financial Group is pleased to announce Nicholas Terry has joined the firm as a Financial Services Representative. Nick spent the first 20 years of his career working as an Institutional Trader and now will be primarily focused on offering insurance and fixed annuities. Joining Lakeshore Financial, he is looking forward to working with individuals and families to help provide them with a road map to achieve their goals.

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Nixon Peabody is pleased to announce that Joe Pesa has joined our Global Finance practice group as an associate. At his prior firm, Joe focused his practice on the negotiation and documentation of financial products, including prime brokerage, structured financing transactions and other similar capital markets transactions. He also completed a secondment assignment with the General Counsel/Treasury group of a large, multi-billion dollar hedge fund.

Executive Construction is proud to announce Vice President Dan Hewitt has joined the Principal ownership group. Throughout his 20-year career, Dan has amassed a portfolio of trading floor and data center builds. His attention to detail supports the planning and impeccable execution of such complex spaces. Dan is an integral part of firm-wide strategic initiatives, including leadership to expand Executive Construction’s mission critical work across the country, and talent-focused goals.

BDO USA, LLP has named Jon Roberts a Partner in the firm’s Assurance practice.

Roberts is a member of the Chicago office’s SEC Assurance practice.

He has an expansive international background having also worked in the U.K. and Australia, and is certified in both U.S. generally accepted accounting principles and International Financial Reporting Standards. He serves large multinational clients within the manufacturing and distribution and technology industries.

REAL ESTATE McCaffery Interests, Chicago

CONSTRUCTION Executive Construction, Chicago Exemplifying the unwavering integrity, operational excellence, and collaborative spirit of Executive Construction, the firm is excited to announce Vice President Lee Robinson has joined the Principal ownership group. Rising from laborer to vice president in his 23-year career with the firm, he is instrumental in the development and mentorship of field team members.

In recent years, his enthusiastic leadership has directed >1.75M sf of builds for McDonald’s, Northern Trust, and Zurich NA.

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INSURANCE Hylant, Chicago / New York As Managing Director of Transactional Risk, William Walker is instrumental in the continued expansion of Hylant’s executive risk practice. In this role, he will drive revenue growth through successful and innovative executive risk program structure, management and consultation. He will also consult and lead representation and warranty insurance (RWI) engagements.

NON-PROFIT The Trust for Public Land, Chicago The Trust for Public Land announces the promotion of Caroline O’Boyle to Associate Vice President of Illinois.

Caroline is a green and open space champion, working on projects like The 606 and Climate Smart Cities decision support tool. Nearly 98% of Chicagoans live within a 10-minute walk to a park and the city ranks #5 on the 2021 ParkScore® Index. These spaces are essential to community health and wellbeing, and Caroline is committed to continuing their accessibility to every Chicagoan.

Real estate development and property management firm McCaffery Interests, Inc. announces the appointment of Brian Munin to Director of Investments and Asset Management. Mr. Munin will lead underwriting, structuring, and financing of investment opportunities, and oversee the McCaffery property portfolio in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Odenton, MD, and Denver. He previously held roles at R2 Companies and Equity Commonwealth, and earned an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

12/1/21 8:43 AM

20 DECEMBER 6, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

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

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CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

ENFUSION LTD LLC seeks ASSOCIATE, ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT in Chicago, IL to Maintain the company’s existing relationships with a client including hedge funds and asset managers. Apply at www.jobpostingtoday.com REF # 44963.

GRUBHUB HOLDINGS, INC. seeks SR. MANAGER, MARKETING STRATEGY & ANALYTICS in Chicago, IL to measure impact of new diner and order growth initiatives for Grubhub and Seamless nationwide Apply at jobpostingtoday.com REF: 80254

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES ENFUSION LTD LLC seeks ASSOCIATE, CLIENT ONBOARDING in Chicago, IL to manage new client implementations and serve as the first point of contact for new clients regarding platform customization, questions/answers and workflow consulting. Apply at www.jobpostingtoday.com REF # 32763.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES GRUBHUB HOLDINGS, INC. seeks SENIOR ANALYST, MARKETING STRATEGY in Chicago, IL to perform data analysis in order to provide strategic insights on the performance of our marketing programs.

Apply at jobpostingtoday.com REF: 47359

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INVESTMENT PROPERTY

WEST MONROE PARTNERS, INC. seeks BUSINESS PROCESS AUTOMATION SR. MANAGER in Chicago, IL to lead business process automation.

Telecommuting permitted. Up to 75% travel required to various unanticipated client sites across the United States. Apply at www.jobpostingtoday.com REF: 67117

Large waterfront development for sale Property has 35 sold homes and 60 empty lots.

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CAREER OPPORTUNITIES WEST MONROE PARTNERS, INC seeks a MANAGER (IT STRATEGY AND BPO) in Chicago, IL & various unanticipated client sites throughout U.S. to develop strategies for business transformations for clients.

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Home sales boom lifts spending on decor HOUSING from Page 1 jobs, watched their stock wealth swell and bought a home at a super-low mortgage rate feel comfortable spending to make the home just right.

Business has grown by about half in 2021 at Shakoor Interiors, based on 15th Street near UIC, its namesake says, “and I can already see it’s going up by 50% again in 2022,” with the jobs she already has booked. A two-person firm in 2020, it added a third this year and will add another next year, she said.

Home sales have been surging since the early months of the pandemic era. By the end of November, 2021 was already the Chicago metro area’s highest-volume year for home sales since 2006, with about 127,100 transactions and still with a month of sales to go. Recent months’ reports suggest at least 10,000 homes will sell in December.

That means that unless the whole thing sputters out this month, at the end of the year home sales will have easily surpassed the all-time record year—2005—when about 133,300 homes sold, according to archived data from Illinois Realtors.

From June 2020, when the pandemic-driven boom first began registering as closed sales, through the end of this year, at least 220,000 homes will have sold in the nine-county metro area. Those sales will have about $81.8 million in economic impact in Illinois.

Crain’s arrived at that figure using the National Association of Realtors estimate that each home sold generates about $37,200 as additional spending by the homeowner, income for the real estate agents and other professionals involved, and the multiplier effect of those dollars circulating in the economy, (The NAR report includes an additional $37,900 for the purchase’s spur to new home construction, but on the advice of housing industry sources, Crain’s eliminated that.)

This might be a conservative estimate, given the indulgent spending that Shakoor and others describe.

You’d expect moving companies to be extra busy because so many people are changing addresses, but leaders of a couple of local firms said their ability to take on extra business is severely hindered by the lack of workers who will take low-wage jobs now.

‘A SANCTUARY’

Find your next corporate tenant or leaser.

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

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Whatever they’ve spent after the home purchase, homebuyers have likely considered it an investment in their family’s well-being, suggests Linda Tuncay Zayer, a professor of marketing and acting associate dean at Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business.

“Home has always been a center of family life,” Zayer says, “but now we see a consumer mindset that home is a sanctuary—a safe, calm, comfortable place amidst all the chaos.”

With their spending on vacations, dining and other out-of-home entertainments curtailed, “spending money on your home feels like a safe bet,” Zayer says.

Even faced with supply chain shortages on furniture, appliances and other materials for home

TODD WINTERS

CLASSIFIEDS

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Christine Mitchell Roman is head of Loop-based renovation and interiors firm CMD Planning & Design. upgrades, Zayer says, “consumers have been willing to wait to get what they want,” because of the higher value they place on home.

“Clients have been very patient” about supply chain issues, says John Plunkett, who after shuttering his family’s chain of nine furniture stores opened an interiors business now based in Wilmette. “They know what’s going on out there. They understand why they have to wait.”

Clogs in the furniture supply chain have turned some shoppers’ attention to readily available antiques, but even so, says Mark Schumacher, CEO of the California-based Home Furnishings Association, buyers who go for new furniture are spending more.

“The average ticket is higher, much higher than before the pandemic,” Schumacher said, though he declined to cite specific figures.

Some of the increase is due to inflation, he said, but some is because “people are excited to start with a blank canvas in their new home.”

Schumacher, Shakoor and Zayer all said a factor in the extra spending may be that there’s more to be done. With the inventory of homes for sale skin-tight, some buyers are having to make do with a house that’s “less than perfect for them,” Zayer said, and count on bringing it up to snuff. There’s also the increasing focus on having home offices, Schumacher and Shakoor said, rooms that often demand a buildout of technology and shelving that wouldn’t be needed if the space were just a guest bedroom.

“I’m busier than I’ve ever been in 30 years of doing this,” says Christine Mitchell Roman, head of Loop-based renovation and interiors firm CMD Planning & Design.

“I’m almost to the point where if the phone rings and I don’t recognize the number, I’m like, ‘Oh, do I even want to answer this?’ ” It’s the opposite of what she initially expected when the pandemic overturned life as we knew it. “I thought people were going to be afraid to spend money on luxury,” she recalls, before laughing at her— and everyone’s—naivete about the changes the pandemic would deliver.

By summer 2020, she said, it was clear that “people aren’t going to be skimping.”

Roman’s experience with cleanslate clients echoes Shakoor’s: “People aren’t bringing a lot of their old furniture,” she says. “I think the

pandemic put a bad taste in their mouth and they want to start from scratch.” That mindset fuels a trend Crain’s noted in the spring, where buyers started asking to buy homes fully or mostly furnished.

‘CAN’T FIND PEOPLE’

For Roman, the rub in this busier-than-ever phase is that another phenomenon of 2021 gets in the way. She’d like to expand her staff to accommodate more clients, but “good luck,” she says. “I can’t find people.”

Ken Miller has the same problem. Miller, who heads Wm. Meyers Movers, an Itasca firm founded by his grandfather a century ago, said that while the number of people who are moving to a new address may have risen, he’s limited to what his 18-person team can do.

“We haven’t had anybody, zero, apply for a job” in months, Miller says. It’s a relatively low-paying job, he says. His rate for labor is $48 an hour, which sounds good, but “they can go to an auto dealership, where the rate is probably $100 an hour” and the work doesn’t require heavy lifting.

Miller acknowledges he hasn’t aggressively hunted for new employees, in part because steady demand has kept the job board full for the people he has. “But if I had more people wanting to work,” he says, “I could do all the business I want.”

Jim Lalagos, president of Advanced Moving & Storage in Glendale Heights, concurs.

“The amount of business that a moving company can handle is based on the number of trucks they can staff,” Lalagos says, “and we have not been able to staff all our trucks, so unfortunately we’ve set a limit on how many jobs we can do.”

Lalagos says about 10 employees, or about 30% of what he had before the pandemic, have left and he hasn’t been able to replace them.

But people still need to move their stuff from one address to another. Lalagos says he tries “to get people to be flexible with their dates. Instead of moving on the 30th, move on the 29th.”

The benefit to Advanced and its employees of the home-buying surge, Lalagos says, is that while in normal years there are long stretches with little work, such as the first few months of a calendar year, in the housing boom, “we’ve kept working all the time.”

12/3/21 4:31 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • DECEMBER 6, 2021 21

LIFE SCIENCES from Page 1 centralized clusters of startups, well-established companies and lab buildings all close to academic institutions that churn out research, Chicago’s growing biotech landscape thus far has been anything but concentrated. New lab space in the area has been scattered by geographically separated universities and where real estate developers want to build, fragmenting the momentum among city and suburban nodes that all show promise, but have little connective tissue.

Much of the recent growth has been close to downtown, where Sterling Bay broke ground in October on a big lab building at Lincoln Yards and Northwestern University spinout Vanqua Bio inked a lease for 25,000 square feet of research space in the Fulton Market District, just blocks from where a new 425,000-square-foot lab building is slated to open early next year.

Yet there are also many green shoots in the suburbs. In Skokie, Chicago-based Singerman Real Estate paid $75 million in October for the 286,000-square-foot lab portion of the Illinois Science & Technology Park—almost the same price the entire 23-acre campus sold for four years ago—and immunotherapy company Cour Pharmaceuticals last month more than doubled its footprint on the campus to 25,000 square feet. In Lake County, the area’s historical hotbed of pharmaceutical giants, Rosalind Franklin University last month snagged $2 million from the state of Illinois to fast-track the buildout of a life sciences startup incubator with lab space for both faculty and commercial tenants.

The dispersion amounts to a new real estate challenge facing the local life sciences sector: a geographically diverse framework and lack of market coordination that could play a

role in how quickly Chicago’s star rises in the eyes of the bioscience community. Industry experts say it could stifle progress in some ways as companies crave a larger campus setting with like-minded scientific peers, yet it could also create a unique offering with multiple locations and rental price points to serve a wide variety of researchers.

“In an ideal world, it would be centralized. Everyone would be right there, and you could scale and grow and that would be the place to be,” says David Saad, an executive vice president at real estate services giant CBRE, who has spent more than a decade brokering leases for life sciences companies downtown and in the suburbs.

“Unfortunately, it’s not happening (that way) yet.”

Companies have historically flocked to clusters like Kendall Square in Cambridge, Mass., and Research Triangle Park in central North Carolina because of the proximity of everything they need to thrive: incubation space, larger lab facilities, access to universities and hospital systems and nearby amenities that help them recruit top talent.

CREATING HUBS

The research that seeds many of the life sciences companies grown in Chicago, meanwhile, has historically been done closer to Northwestern in Evanston, University of Chicago in Hyde Park and the hospital systems in the Illinois Medical District on the city’s Near West Side. But instead of building more lab space on or near those campuses, developers have been jockeying to create what they hope will emerge as the nucleus for local life sciences startups in places like Fulton Market or Lincoln Yards.

One such effort is in Bronzeville, where a group led by Farpoint Development will break ground next summer on a 500,000-square-foot building anchored by a medical

GENSLER

Scattered development of laboratory space shapes Chicago’s life sciences market

A rendering of Ally, a lab space building on which Sterling Bay broke ground this year. research facility affiliated with Israel’s Sheba Medical Center, the centerpiece of what could become a mixed-use campus rife with lab and research space on the former site of Michael Reese Hospital.

Farpoint CEO Scott Goodman contends his site has an advantage because it’s easily accessible from so many major universities and hospitals in the city, whose researchers tend to be territorial.

“The hospitals and universities are like dogs,” Goodman says.

“We’re trying to create the dog park to make them play together well.”

Establishing a core district where biotech and pharmaceutical companies want to gather would help Chicago compete with top-tier life sciences markets, says Suzet McKinney, former CEO of the Illinois Medical District, who now leads Sterling Bay’s push into

life sciences. She is focused on building such a campus at Lincoln Yards, but says the market needs all of the lab space developments to succeed to create an “ecosystem” that attracts early-stage bioscience companies.

“Instead of looking at this from a competitive standpoint, we really need to be collaborating and we need strong collaboration from the city and state” to help incentivize researchers to choose Chicago, McKinney says.

Multiple small clusters of lab space also might help Chicago stand out from rival markets as “not a one-size-fits-all community,” says John Conrad, president and CEO of the Illinois Biotechnology Innovation Organization industry trade group.

“If you want to build out in Boston, it’s Cambridge. And that

means paying Cambridge prices,” he says. “Companies are going to have different needs.”

Xeris Pharmaceuticals CEO Paul Edick, whose injectable drug-maker company relocated its lab operations to Fulton Market last year from San Diego, downplays the significance of Chicago’s decentralized network of lab spaces—early researchers in Cambridge “felt like they were on an island for a while,” he says—but Chicago will only become a “vibrant life sciences city” if the area’s big pharmaceutical players like Abbott Laboratories, AbbVie and Baxter International in the northern suburbs establish a presence downtown among biotech startups, and vice versa.

“You have people in Chicago who love coming to the city and others who would rather (work) in the suburbs,” he says. “You need both.”

Less oversight, funding delay decommissioning for Exelon nuke sites in Illinois EXELON from Page 3 are six stations, sprinkled mainly throughout northern Illinois. New York hosts just three plants, and two of those are in Oswego, north of Syracuse on Lake Ontario.

In a statement, the company points to relatively more generous bailout treatment in New York than Illinois has provided to date.

DEREGULATION PUT THAT RESPONSIBILITY SOLELY ON EXELON, AND THE CUSTOMER CHARGES TO SUPPORT THE FUNDS ENDED IN 2006.

“New York has implemented policies that offer long-term support to our nuclear fleet, and the New York State Energy Research (and) Development Authority (NYSERDA) recommends relicensing the plants an additional 20 years to help meet the state’s climate goals,” the company says. “The

P021_CCB_20211206.indd 21

longer expected lifespan of the plants will give decommissioning trust funds adequate time to grow, which is why we can project a 20year decommissioning timeline for the New York fleet.”

Adds the company, “The timeline for decommissioning a nuclear plant is largely driven by its expected lifespan, which determines how long decommissioning trust funds—which are used to pay for decommissioning—have to grow. Given that fact, the decommissioning outlooks for our nuclear plants in Illinois and New York are not comparable.”

Another factor that isn’t comparable: New York has leverage Illinois doesn’t.

Exelon is spinning off its power-generation unit as a separate publicly traded company to be called Constellation, which will own and operate the company’s nuke plants in Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Exelon needs approval for the spinoff in only one of those states: New York.

New York for many years has assumed greater oversight over nuclear plants than most other states, which leave the job to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

That enables New York regulators to extract concessions from Exelon. The state’s Public Service Commission will vote later this month on the Nov. 23 settlement Exelon struck with the commission’s staff, the New York attorney general and nonprofit Alliance for a Green Economy.

FUNDS

Approval from New York is the final major regulatory hurdle for the spinoff, which already has the backing of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the NRC. Illinoisans got an inkling of Exelon’s plans here when it moved to close Byron and Dresden before the last-second reprieve. In filings with the NRC, the company said it would take the full 60 years the agency allows to clean up the Byron site near Rockford. The plan for Dresden called for 31 years.

Why the difference? Money.

Dresden is far older than Byron.

Dresden’s two reactors began operation in 1970 and 1971; Byron’s two reactors started up in 1985 and 1987. As a result, the investment funds backing the cleanup of all those reactors and the sites around them are bigger for Dresden than for Byron.

When the plants were regulated, ratepayers paid into the funds via their monthly electric bills and assumed responsibility for their eventual cleanup. Deregulation put that responsibility solely on Exelon, and the customer charges to support the funds ended in 2006.

Since that time, Exelon has invested none of its own money in the funds and has made clear it will rely on investment returns to build the nest eggs up enough to finance restoration.

By contrast, the settlement in New York requires Exelon to pump $15 million now into the fund supporting one of the reactors at the Nine Mile Point station in Oswego.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Illinois

lawmakers might have had some leverage to at least propose a reasonable time frame for plant-site cleanup when Exelon was demanding a bailout to keep the plants open. But the subject never came up, at least publicly, as they negotiated legislation that gave Exelon $700 million in ratepayer subsidies over five years. That’s on top of the $2.4 billion in ratepayer subsidies over 10 years that Exelon obtained in 2016 to keep open two other plants. Just one of Exelon’s six nukes in Illinois remains unsubsidized.

Even with the subsidies, Dresden is slated to close in a decade.

Exelon hasn’t moved to extend the licenses for the reactors, which run until 2029 and 2031, respectively.

Byron’s licenses allow it to operate into the 2040s. But Exelon’s threat to shutter that plant if the state didn’t come through with subsidies, despite it being one of the youngest nukes in the Illinois fleet, made clear the company wouldn’t keep running it if it didn’t see a financial benefit to doing so.

12/3/21 4:34 PM

22 DECEMBER 6, 2021 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

DIVERSITY from Page 3 development and engineering roles. The median salary for software developers in 2020 topped $110,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

P33’s report is based on higher education databases and more than 100 interviews with 25 Chicago technology companies.

With the tech sector expanding in a city as racially diverse as Chicago, P33 and others have been vocal about the need to make the industry more inclusive. Black and Latino people represent twothirds of Chicago’s population, but just 14% of the local tech workforce, P33 reports. Nationally, Black and Latino people made up about 9% and 8%, respectively, of U.S. STEM jobs in 2019, according to a Pew Research report.

“It’s an existential concern for us as a city,” says P33 senior vice president Matthew Muench, the lead author of the report and a former head of workforce development under Mayors Lori Lightfoot and Rahm Emanuel. “The challenge companies have with filling roles and with building diverse teams is directly a result of the fact that we’re leaving talent on the sidelines as a city.”

Preparation for a tech career begins as early as preschool, and often relies on students excelling in

math and science through middle and high school, choosing to study CS in college, and sticking with it. P33’s report shows that 85% of Black students graduate from Illinois high schools without meeting college readiness standards in math, while 73% of Latino students graduate without meeting standards, which greatly affects a student’s ability and desire to pursue a STEM major in college.

DEMOGRAPHICS

At the University of Illinois, one of the state’s largest producers of CS graduates, most of the students in the program are white men, says Rashid Bashir, the dean of the Grainger College of Engineering. In fall 2021, only 1.7% of students in the CS program were Black, down from 2.8% in 2019, and about 5% were Latino in 2021, up from 4.1% in 2019, according to U of I. “This is very clearly a real challenge,” Bashir says. “We need to work harder with high schools and with community colleges to prepare the students and provide them the STEM and the math background to then get admitted into our college.”

Bashir says U of I is making progress, albeit slowly. U of I works with local high schools and community colleges to create pathways for more diverse

students to pursue CS and other STEM degrees at the college.

Anecdotally, local tech companies say hiring diverse talent for software jobs is hard. M1 Finance, a Chicago financial technology startup that employs more than 300 people, says it struggles to find Black and Latino candidates to fill high-paying software development and engineering roles.

“It’s definitely tough to do because you can’t just tell your recruiters to go hire diverse talent and then automatically assume you’re going to get this huge diverse group of people,” said Maria Selvaggio, M1’s vice president of people. “Improving diversity in tech pipelines has to be pretty deliberate and it starts well before the recruiting process.”

It’s not just tech startups that are having trouble filling roles. JPMorgan Chase, which has a growing technology team in Chicago topping 2,000 employees, is seeing a similar pattern.

“There is a lot of competition for tech talent, especially diverse tech talent,” said Brittany Scott, the executive director of global technology at JPMorgan, which has nearly 250 open jobs on its Chicago tech team.

To develop a more diverse tech talent pipeline, Scott says JPMorgan works with high school and City Colleges of Chicago students

ISTOCK

Local colleges produce few Black and Latino computer science graduates

Black and Latino people represent two-thirds of Chicago’s population, but just 14% of the local tech workforce, technology development organization P33 reports. to introduce them to the industry through programs and internships.

Diversity in tech has been a contentious topic for the last several years. When companies cite a “pipeline problem,” they’re often accused of making excuses for their own shortcomings or blind spots.

“The reason folks have said it’s not a pipeline problem is because to say that is to absolve the companies from any responsibility in what they can be doing to address inequities in tech,” Muench says. “But it’s a bit churlish to ignore the math.”

Despite the discouraging fig-

ures on Black and Latino representation in Chicago’s tech industry, data on women in tech looks better. According to P33, more than 40% of entry-level hires for tech roles in Chicago in 2021 were women. Overall, about 30% of Chicago’s technical workforce is female.

“We can build what’s essentially the Chicago model for inclusive tech growth,” Muench says. “I look at Seattle, San Francisco and other cities, and see that their tech growth exacerbated preexisting inequities and we don’t want to do that.”

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12/3/21 4:35 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • DECEMBER 6, 2021 23

LIF

Nam

Holiday lights exhibits draw big crowds and boost revenue for zoos, gardens “Lightscape” show for the first time in 2019, has sold out both years. The 175,000-plus who attended in the inaugural year were a key reason for the north suburban park setting an annual attendance record of more than 1.275 million visitors, and it is on pace to sell 220,000 “Lightscape” tickets this year, according to Harriet Resnick, vice president of visitor experience and business development.

New this year, the ever-hustling Village of Rosemont has gotten into the lights game, too, mounting the “Amaze Light Festival” at Impact Field, along with partners the Chicago Dogs independent baseball team and lighting firm Artistic Holiday Designs, which helps put on such shows across the country.

And Brookfield Zoo, whose “Holiday Magic” at 40 years is the area’s longest-running, year-end lights event, has roughly doubled the number of nights it operates to 24. The expansion began after the revenue challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when the outdoor shows were especially important to the institutions that had been forced to close and limit attendance throughout the year.

“We may look to expand that even further,” said David Burns, chief financial officer for the west suburban zoo.

Except for Lincoln Park Zoo,

the institutions charge from $23$26 for an adult ticket, and all require timed-entry reservations.

December weekend and Christmas-week nights, especially, tend to sell out in advance. Brookfield lets members attend “Holiday Magic” free, seeing it as a significant member benefit.

POPULARITY

When Chicago Botanic Garden, in Glencoe, decided to join the others and put on its own yearend lighting show in 2019, it was an instant success. The sellout of “Lightscape,” a collection of artist-designed light installations along a 1¼-mile path mounted in partnership with Sony Music and Arny Granat of WAD Entertainment, was a major factor in the garden’s visitor services revenue rising by more than $3.5 million over the previous year, to almost $7.9 million, according to the institution’s federal tax forms.

But more than that, it brought new visitors to the grounds with an efficiency that no marketing blast or Groupon discount could ever match. Twenty percent of those first-year visitors had never been to the garden before, VP Resnick said surveys showed, and garden membership has grown to all-time high, currently at about 53,000.

Peer institutions took notice.

The garden’s production partners are putting on versions of “Lightscape” this year at botanical gardens in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, San Antonio and Houston, ac-

MORTEM ARBORETUM

LIGHTS from Page 3

Tree illumination at the Mortem Arboretum. cording to Resnick.

“It’s the same business model.

It’s the same partners. It’s the same designer,” she said. “It’s kind of spread its way across the nation.”

At Morton, too, the expectation is that “Illumination” will surpass 200,000 visitors this year, LaVire said, as it returns to a walking experience after being drive-through only for COVID safety in 2020.

And as with the Botanic Garden, “Illumination” almost flips the facility’s attendance script. On a normal summer day, Morton visitorship might be 80% members, she said.

“For ‘Illumination,’ only 40% of the attendees are actually members and 60% of the attendees are guests,” said LaVire, with almost

40% of the nonmembers being first-timers. “It was very much a phenomenon for the arboretum,” she said.

Being free in years past and right in the city, Lincoln Park Zoo has had the highest lights fest attendance, reaching a peak of over 600,000 visitors attending “ZooLights” in 2019.

“We had several nights that were over 50,000 people in a night,” CEO-elect Ross said. “And those were unpleasant for everyone who attended, I think. It was just a little bit too many people all at the same time.”

After cutting attendance limits way back in 2020, the zoo is doing the same this year, she said, keeping visitors well under 20,000 per

night. Lincoln Park is now charging $5 on the more popular nights mostly to help ensure that people show up for their timed-entry reservations, said Ross.

Yet for all the interest in the lights shows, the increasing number of them and, in some cases, the expanding number of nights, the market seems to be in no way saturated.

“My competitive spirit says, ‘Come on, we were here first, we’ve done it longer and we’re the best,’” said Leah Rippe, Brookfield’s VP of marketing and communications. “But, no, there’s plenty of room for everyone to enjoy a holiday experience, for sure. And if you love lights, you’re going to go to more than just one.”

The rise in organized retail theft is worrying workers and scaring shoppers with shoplifting now face frightening smash-and-grab raids by while the workers hammered gangs of professional thieves who away. “It’s unfortunate, but I’ve make off with large hauls of merchandise. Nationally, dollars lost been avoiding retail.”

She’s not alone. Widely publicized to organized retail crime topped incidents of brazen, organized re- $700,000 per $1 billion in sales in tail theft around the country—in- 2020, up nearly 60% since 2015, cluding at Oakbrook Center mall, according to a recent National Reon Michigan Avenue and in the tail Federation report. In Illinois, Gold Coast—have injected an shops lost $3.7 billion to $4 billion undercurrent of fear into the in- worth of merchandise to theft last dustry’s biggest shopping season. year, according to the Illinois ReFear of crime dampens store traf- tail Merchants Association. State fic, hurting sales and forcing stores officials point out that retailers to spend more on security. Work- aren’t the only ones who suffer the ers fear for their safety, too, exac- loss: Billions of dollars of stolen erbating the staffing challenges goods mean millions lost in sales taxes for state and local governments.

“PEOPLE ARE SCARED. THEY’RE Chicago-area stores have hired guards and SCARED TO GO INTO WORK; THEY reduced operating hours.

Some empty their floors DON’T WANT TO DEAL WITH IT.” and window displays of Andrew Ghazarian, Gold Coast retail worker merchandise at night.

If one store is hit, many that have plagued retailers during react, pre-emptively boarding up their windows or sending workers the pandemic.

“People are scared. They’re home early. But they must walk a scared to go into work; they don’t fine line, beefing up security in a want to deal with it,” says Andrew way that won’t scare off customGhazarian, who has worked at ers.

“You don’t want to have an Gold Coast clothing store Rag & armed-camp feeling to it, so it Bone for about six years.

Retailers that have long dealt must be done artfully,” says Rob RETAIL from Page 1

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Karr, president and CEO of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association. “It’s a balancing act.”

Such investments aren’t cheap, and security personnel are in short supply, Karr says. On top of that, retailers are also increasing wages for employees scared to come to work as holiday shopping kicks into full gear amid a tight labor market. Raising prices to cover the additional costs could hurt sales.

WORKERS WEARY

Workers are also weary: For nearly two years, they’ve been tasked with implementing COVID-19 safety protocols. Dealing with the added stress of potential theft can be too much.

“Everyone’s working harder than they’ve ever worked in retail, and this is going on and a lot of people are like, ‘For me, it’s not worth it,’ ” Ghazarian says.

He says Rag & Bone employs a staff of six, about half the pre-pandemic level. The store was looted overnight in August 2020, when many surrounding stores were also targeted amid downtown rioting. For two months after, employees took all merchandise off the main floor each night, a chore that added an hour of work at the

beginning and end of the day.

Customers tell Ghazarian they’re scared to come shop. Whenever a national news event might cause unrest—such as the recent Kyle Rittenhouse trial or Ahmaud Arbery verdict—managers of surrounding stores put their heads together to decide how to prepare, he says.

Retailers tell workers not to engage with shoplifters, but Ghazarian says it’s hard not to confront someone trying to make off with store merchandise. He once chased a man who stole jeans through the rain.

“They say don’t do anything,” he says. “I got him in an alley and I got my three pairs of jeans back.”

Industry operators say thieves are becoming more audacious, and that the higher demand for online goods brought on by the pandemic has fueled an increase in such crimes.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul says the key to fighting organized retail crime is communication between retailers, online marketplaces and law enforcement agencies. He launched a task force in September to help.

“I can’t overemphasize the importance of not treating it as just a local problem, as ‘Oh, desperate

people are doing this,’ ” he says.

“We’ve got strong evidence to believe there are very sophisticated operations that are behind some of what may seem to be just random local acts.”

Most retailers decline to comment on specific security measures they’re taking, or how much they’ve spent.

CVS Health installed time-delay safes at all 392 of its Illinois drugstores to help prevent robberies.

Maje, a women’s clothing store on Oak Street, now requires two workers to be on duty and requires they take breaks together, so no one is alone in the shop, says supervisor Linda Goodman. Deerfield-based Walgreens trained employees to avoid physical engagement with suspected shoplifters. It also cited organized retail crime in its decision to close five San Francisco locations last month.

Until recently, Karr says he had never heard of rampant theft factoring into a retailer’s decision on where to locate new stores or close existing locations.

For now, Ghazarian says he tries not to live in fear.

“It’s always in the back of your mind,” he says. “I know it’ll happen again. You just don’t know when.”

Vol. 44, No. 49 – 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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