Boeing’s departure must be a wake-up call for City Hall: Get the Loop back on track
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s predecessors, Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel, had a calling card they’d rely on frequently to flex Chicago’s status as a true global city. For Daley and Emanuel, decisions by America’s corporate giants to relocate to the city’s downtown signaled Chicago’s rightful place among cities that mattered not just domestically, but internationally.
Under Emanuel, Archer Daniels Midland, McDonald’s and Motorola all relocated their headquarters to Chicago. Facebook, Yelp and Google opened offices here under his watch. And well before Emanuel, in 2001, Daley landed the corporate titan that instantly swung the world’s gaze toward Chicago — commercial aviation leader Boeing.
Boeing’s move to a 36-story building at 100 N. Riverside Plaza added only 400 employees to downtown — but the move carried massive symbolic weight.
No longer could Chicago be tossed into the Rust Belt bucket alongside Cleveland or Detroit. Chicago, and more specifically the Loop, had arrived as a destination for corporations that competed on a global scale. That meant Chicago itself could compete globally, and aspire to the same strata as global cities like New York, London, Paris, Shanghai and Singapore.
Alas, those halcyon days seem far away now. Boeing’s announcement last week that it will move its corporate headquarters to Arlington, Virginia, broadsided the city with a jolt that threatens to reverberate for some time. The body blow isn’t about the loss of employees — in fact, Boeing has said it will keep its roster of 400 workers in Chicago and maintain a presence in the city.
The hurt felt by Boeing’s departure is all about perceptions about Chicago. And, specifically, its beleaguered downtown.
The Loop hasn’t just gone through a rough patch lately — it’s been put through the wringer.
Even as downtown begins to gradually loose itself from the pandemic, COVID19 s ravages have left an indelible mark on the Loop’s hectic, bustling vibe. Marquee restaurants have shut down. Workers are coming back, but offices have far from fully rebounded; the downtown vacancy rate is up to 19.7% as of the end of March. That’s worse than the 17.9% mark at the end of December. Retail vacancy along the Magnificent Mile is also worryingly on the rise. And recent outbreaks of violent crime have heightened a wariness about just how safe downtown streets and CTA train platforms are.
Lightfoot hasn’t formally announced her reelection bid, but all signs point to her pursuit of a second term. As she winds down her first term in office, she faces a bevy of top-shelf priorities: tackling the intractability of citywide violent crime; bringing to fruition her pledges to revitalize long-neglected neighborhoods on the South and West sides; implementing genuine, lasting police reforms; and ensuring that the just-announced Bally’s casino in the River West neighborhood gets done in a way that enhances the city rather than diminishes it.
One of those priorities must also be the future health and viability of Chicago’s downtown.
When corporations mull over a relocation to a new urban center, they consider a gamut of factors. Does the candidate city’s workforce mesh with their company’s needs? Does that city’s geographic location work well for the company’s logistics? Are there potential sweeteners such as tax incentives on the table?
But just as important are much more universal factors. How safe is the downtown for employees and visitors? What are the city’s cultural amenities like? How easy or hard is it to get around? Is the downtown’s economic arrow heading up or down?
Despite its famed passenger jets, Boeing’s also a major defense contractor, and its exit may say less about the Loop’s travails and more about the plane-maker’s desire to be closer to the nation’s capital, a metro region that is home to other rival military contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. “The region makes strategic sense for our global headquarters given its proximity to our customers and stakeholders, and its access to world-class engineering and technical talent,” Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said in a statement.
Still, it’s not the only corporate giant to recently reduce its footprint in the Loop. In December, United Airlines announced it was moving a quarter of its downtown workforce — 900 workers — from its headquarters in Willis Tower to northwest suburban Arlington Heights.
Lightfoot reacted to Boeing’s departure by downplaying it. “We have a robust pipeline of major corporate relocations and expansions, and we expect more announcements in coming months,” Lightfoot said in a statement Thursday. “What remains to be true is that Chicago is a major hub for global corporations that recognize our diverse workforce, expansive infrastructure, and thriving economy.”
Indeed, Chicago can remain a major hub for global corporations, but only if Lightfoot and the rest of City Hall craft a road map for the Loop’s post-pandemic rebound. That will mean finding ways to help the Loop adapt to the likelihood of hybrid work environments at employers big and small, nurturing a retail comeback along Michigan Avenue, State Street and other prime shopping and leisure corridors, and most of all, doing what it takes to rekindle among Chicagoans, suburbanites and tourists a sense of safety on downtown streets.
It may seem that Boeing’s departure is weighted with gloom, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It could be the wake-up call that Lightfoot and City Hall need to make the Loop’s resurgence a top-line task. But that requires heeding the alarm.