The downward spiral of americas second city

Dec. 12, 2021 1:17 pm ET

An aerial view of downtown Chicago, June 29.Photo: daniel slim/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Those of us who came of age in Chicago loved the city for all reasons. From Daniel Burnham to the Daleys, Robert McCormick and all the industrial magnates who line the front of the Merchandise Mart, Chicago had much to admire. The architecture, the teams, the markets, the melting-pot culture. From the excesses of politics to the steady hand of industry, it was always the city that worked.

But now we may have reached a point at which radical individualism at the expense of community, and a victim mentality (read: critical race theory) fueled by public unions, have undermined the city’s ability to sustain itself. The failure of the Great Society of the ’60s may yet find its poster child in Chicago.

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When Navy Pier opened as a re-imagined tourist attraction in 1995, it was a white elephant project 50 years stalled. Several mayors and many City Hall department heads had tried but failed to make retail use of the half-mile jut into Lake Michigan. When Navy Pier finally opened, its face-lift was behind schedule and over budget. Of course it was.

Love or despise its current personality — the gaudy signage, pricey thingamajigs, perpetual wafts of roasted nuts — Navy Pier is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Midwest and Chicago’s top attraction. Families flock to the pier for shopping and dining, and breathtaking views of the city’s striking skyline. That would be in a normal summer, in a normal tourist season, in a normal year.

But nothing about 2020 has been normal. Navy Pier, like much of downtown, has been closed on and off, its lights dimmed and Ferris wheel still. The coronavirus pandemic and the civil unrest that tore through the city in multiple waves this summer took a phenomenal toll on the once-sturdy retail infrastructure of downtown. In just a few months, equally as breathtaking in its swiftness, Chicago feels defeated. It looks it.

Property owners are worried about their investments. Condo owners are putting their homes up for sale. Corporate tenants are breaking leases. Work-at-home mandates are forcing companies to rethink office space. If you’ve been downtown lately, you might have anticipated a tumbleweed rolling across Michigan Avenue.

Are we witnessing the death of downtown?

Renovating Navy Pier was one of former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s first mega projects designed to get people to visit and dine downtown. When he first was elected in 1989, downtown Chicago was not a nightly hot spot. It was a worker’s den, a place to ride the elevator up to a high-rise office before climbing aboard the 5:50 p.m. Metra headed home. The Loop was dark and vacant once the trains headed out.

Years of focus on downtown development along with natural gentrification brought the city to life. The boundaries of urban livability stretched into the West and South loops. McCormick Place expansions, the renovation of Soldier Field, investments in O’Hare and Midway airports, and the gradual increase of swanky apartment buildings with rooftop pools transformed the city into a mecca of high demand. Just a couple of years ago, we were intrigued by Elon Musk’s proposal for a high-speed, underground train to whisk people to O’Hare. Today that seems even more of a ludicrous pipe dream. Who would be riding it?

Chicago, like its big-city counterparts across the country, is in survival mode, whacked by the coronavirus pandemic, looting and protesting that damaged hundreds of properties, and a deep sense of insecurity over safety. Add to it the city’s chronic budget shortfalls and stagnant property values, and many city dwellers are looking for a way out.

A sample of Tribune reporting: In May, Jenner & Block, one of Chicago’s largest law firms, which leases about one-third of a 46-story tower on North Clark Street, got sued for skipping millions in rent payments. Law firms, engineering firms and public relations companies have workforces that can operate from home.

A 74-story skyscraper and residential building designed by the renowned Helmut Jahn on South Michigan Avenue in June stopped construction work. Concerns about the pandemic brought to a halt the city’s largest condominium project to begin construction in more than a decade.

The Aon Center and Prudential buildings on East Randolph Street — bustling office complexes with dozens of in-house eateries and meeting spaces — emptied out almost overnight in March and tenants, including the Chicago Tribune, are reconsidering their leases.

Hotels are in despair. The exquisite Palmer House Hilton, which is closed indefinitely, is being sued for $338 million in missed loan payments, becoming Chicago’s largest foreclosure since the pandemic began.

The apartment occupancy rate in downtown Chicago, according to Crain’s Chicago Business and Integra Realty Resources, has fallen to 89.2%, which may not sound bad, until you learn it’s the lowest level in 18 years.

“Since the second round of looting, it’s been like the Hoover Dam broke and the water is gushing through,” Matt Laricy with Americorp Real Estate told Crain’s on Aug. 31. “My phone does not stop ringing with people who say they love Chicago but they’ve had enough.”

Chicago has survived and thrived through economic upheaval. Things were dire in 1981 when the Chicago Tribune and reporter Richard C. Longworth embarked on a series, “City on the Brink.” (You can read more from that reporter and his recommendations in Sunday’s Perspective section).

Chicago’s outlook was dark. Industry was fleeing for cheaper markets, families were following it, and the city had no strategy to replace its jobs engine. An Illinois Chamber of Commerce official at the time, David Baker, cautioned that the loss of industry was “a very vicious circle that people don’t like to talk about because the outlook is not very bright.”

But Chicago did rev up, gradually. New technologies, cheap energy prices and a growing service sector contributed to a Chicago that, by 2004, prompted a Tribune editorial headline: “Chicago in a sweet spot.”

Until very recently, downtown was the least of the city’s problems. Violent crime and lack of jobs on the South and West sides, and an exodus of middle-class Black families due to both, have destabilized wide swaths of Chicago. The most recent mayoral election focused on the need to revitalize struggling economies in low-income neighborhoods. Voters were frustrated with Chicago’s “Tale of Two Cities,” one city that glistened and beckoned visitors downtown, and the other city of danger and disenfranchisement.

It’s almost incomprehensible how swiftly things changed.

WGN-720 Radio host John Williams invited listeners recently to call into the show and answer one question: Why aren’t you coming downtown anymore? The answers were not surprising but they were concerning. Lack of safety drove many calculations for suburban dwellers to stay put. Not only are many restaurants closed, or open outside based on the weather, the scenes of looting here and protesters confronting diners elsewhere are having a profound effect.

One caller named Lou said he and his wife decided to head downtown for a celebratory dinner at an expensive steakhouse. They felt pretty good about it until Lou noticed someone standing at the restaurant entryway with a semi-automatic pistol fastened to his right hip. It wasn’t a patron. It wasn’t a protester. It was restaurant security, a new component to dining safely at one of Chicago’s finest steakhouses. “We’re not coming down here anymore,” Lou’s wife told him.

Keeping taxpayers from leaving, flooding downtown with workers and diners and restarting stalled projects — bringing the city back to pre-pandemic status — will not be easy. It will require commitment and vision, if it’s to happen. Chicago is a resilient city but it’s not a stone monument. It’s a living, breathing organism. It will thrive or wither based on care and attention.

Will corporate leaders commit to bringing employees back to work, to fill empty office buildings? Or will cheaper at-home labor be too enticing? Will folks like Lou give downtown another chance? Will visitors recharge the entertainment venues, the theater community, the restaurants that have suffered, and will they hop in cabs and tip valets?

Will long lines of antsy kids snake through Navy Pier, waiting for a ride on the Ferris wheel?

Not without assurances from Chicago’s leaders, and not without a tangible reduction in crime. Not without an urgent plan, now, to bring the city back and not without buy-in from residents, employers, civic leaders and everyone who cares about this place. Divisiveness won’t cut it, nor will silence.

We used to hound Chicago’s mayors to focus on struggling communities and remind them downtown, for the most part, could fend for itself. That’s not true anymore.

Editorials reflect the opinion of the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board.

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What was the Second City in America?

Chicago was originally dubbed the Second City to illustrate its status in America. When Los Angeles surpassed Chicago in population in 1984, the informal title of Second City transferred to Los Angeles.

How did Chicago get the name Second City?

Rebuilding a Second Time They planned to make Chicago bigger and better, and because the people wanted to give Chicago a second chance, it became known as the Second City. In Mayer's and Wade's book, The Growth of a Metropolis, they entitled a chapter “The Second City” that addresses this theory.