Chicago already had big bucks to put toward resurrecting LaSalle Street office buildings as housing, and added another $5 million to inject into the financial corridor’s retail scene, too.
The city council’s Finance Committee approved a grant program to fuel the Central Loop’s retail turnaround as part of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to transform what has traditionally been Chicago’s financial corridor into a mixed-use district, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
The funds will be dedicated to luring new neighborhood eateries and “cultural” attractions to LaSalle buildings contending with big blocks of vacancy, as the thoroughfare’s 36 percent vacancy rate is the worst in the Loop, and below the record-high 21.4 percent office vacancy of the entire downtown market.
Lightfoot’s “LaSalle Street Reimagined” initiative calls for plans to fill almost 5 million square feet of vacant commercial space with new businesses and convert office buildings into more than 1,000 new residential units, a third of which she aims to make affordable by offering incentives to developers in exchange for commitments to low- and middle-income housing.
In response to the city’s invitation for proposals to convert LaSalle office buildings, City Hall received proposals for more than $1 billion-worth of work that would make apartments out of buildings such as AmTrust’s 135 South LaSalle, Mike Reschke and Quintin Primo’s 111 West Monroe Street.
The retail grant program is the next phase of that, as the city looks to reverse the fortune’s of the area’s struggling shopping and dining scene amid shrunken lunchtime work crowds in the Loop as downtown office attendance remains well below pre-pandemic levels.
The new program will offer grants up to $250,000 to counter the costs of opening new businesses. The funds will come from the LaSalle-Central TIF district, which has about $372 million total at its disposal, some of which could be deployed to support community development projects within both the retail and office conversion categories encouraged by the LaSalle Street programs. Retailers that want to expand from low- or moderate-income neighborhoods will also be eligible for an additional $50,000 incentive.
There are some guardrails. Franchises, liquor stores, bars and banquet halls won’t be eligible for the retail grant program, nor will residential projects, Deputy Planning and Development Commissioner Mary O’Connor told the outlet.
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— Victoria Pruitt