The Chicago skyline, once a jumble of yellow steel and rotating jibs, is uncharacteristically quiet. To the casual observer walking the Loop, where the James Thompson Center is being transformed into Google’s new Midwest headquarters, the city can still feel like a construction hub.
But for the men and women running Chicago’s largest general contracting firms, the view from the C-suite is sobering.
“We’re under 10 cranes. It’s just ridiculous,” Tom Cuculich, executive director of the Chicagoland Associated General Contractors, said. “Just over six years ago, during the Emanuel administration, we had 60 cranes. That is an indicator of where the market is.”
The “where” is a state of suspended animation for traditional commercial development. High interest rates, a cooled investment climate and a fundamental shift in how corporations use commercial property have combined to keep the city’s marquee office towers and massive luxury residential projects in the pipeline rather than in the ground.
Yet, The Real Deal’s latest ranking of Chicago’s top general contractors reveals a market that hasn’t collapsed, though it has mutated. In a year where the construction comedown could have been a total crash, a handful of specialty sectors — data centers, a massive casino, quantum computing, healthcare, education and a presidential library (now wrapping up) — stepped in to save the day.
The Windy City’s top 20 contractors combined to win approval for a total of just under $3.4 billion worth of projects in 2025, down from nearly $3.6 billion the previous year, public records show.
Casino king
The volatility of the Chicago market is best illustrated by the dramatic shuffle at the top of the leaderboard. In 2023, Power Construction sat on a throne of nearly $1 billion in project volume. By 2024, the market hit a slowdown. Now, looking at the data for the 2026 ranking (based on 2025 permits), a new hierarchy has emerged, dominated by firms that managed to land “the big one.”
Gilbane Building Company surged to the top spot, a meteoric rise fueled almost entirely by a single, massive permit: the $396.2 million core and shell for Bally’s Chicago Casino at the old Tribune Publishing site. That one project accounts for two-thirds of Gilbane’s total volume, and the firm was involved as part of the joint venture that applied for and won the casino license from the city for years before the groundbreaking. It has worked for Bally’s before.
Without the casino, Gilbane would be outside the ranking, but its book of business is balanced across sectors in the Chicagoland area outside city limits.
“The food and beverage space is one we continue to build our portfolio through and Chicago has a great market for food and beverage manufacturing,” Gilbane vice president and Chicago business leader Karrie Kratz said. The Chicago office also works in pharmaceutical research, development and laboratory spaces. “Those are kind of keys to our private market,” she said.
Digital life raft
While the casino is the most visible project, the engine growing more reliable for Chicago’s builders is one that rarely has windows: the data center.
“If it wasn’t for data centers and healthcare, it would be an absolutely down year,” Cuculich admits. “The big projects like The 78 and the 1901 Project [near the United Center] are on the drawing board. They’re portending good times and a good pipeline for the future, once the Obama Presidential Center and the casino are finished.”
Meanwhile, contractors are engaging in a talent war in preparation for stalled megaprojects to get off the ground, said No. 2-ranked Skender’s president Andy Halik.
“We can’t hire fast enough,” he said. Sometimes only partnerships can amass all the top talent needed. “You’re going to see more and more general contractors strategically partnering to solve for those major developments.” Halik mentioned Skender’s partnership with No. 5-ranked Clayco on the new Lurie Children’s hospital in west suburban Downers Grove, as an example.
“Deep-pocketed, large organizations, whether they’re in tech or financial or law, they are absolutely reinvesting in their office space.”
As traditional industrial logistics cools off slightly from its pandemic-era peak, data centers have become the holy grail for many contractors. However, this sector also faces mounting headwinds.
Cuculich claims Illinois is losing its competitive position, even before recent public backlash against data centers. He attributes this to issues like Illinois’ stricter version of the Biometric Information Privacy Act compared to surrounding states, which has opened up digital storage firms to lawsuits, as well as proposed increases in permit fees for data centers. Electrical utility companies are viewing these projects as highly speculative, motivating them to push for the bigger fee structure.
Consequently, developers are choosing to build in other cities such as Columbus, Indianapolis and Salt Lake City, Cuculich said.
Despite these fears, the high-tech save is real: A $100 million permit for the South Side’s multibillion dollar quantum computing facility anchored Clayco’s ranking.
Not everyone agrees Chicago permit data alone tells the whole story. Michael Fassnacht, chief growth officer at Clayco, said that focusing solely inside city limits provides an incomplete picture.
“We had a great year in 2025 for the region,” Fassnacht said. “You have to look at the 10 million people in this metro area — it’s a top 23 largest economy in the world. People don’t think about these artificial boundaries.”
Advanced manufacturing projects paired with the data center boom to make industrial-style development the lifeblood for area builders over the past year, Fassnacht said.
“The quantum project is such a big bet for the region and the state,” Fassnacht said. “To be a global leader in one of the future technology platforms that changes all of our lives, there’s a positive impact on the South Side, but a bigger, longer one over the next 30 years for all our industries and the effectiveness of our economy.”
Healthcare, education, airport fill gaps
With private office construction “almost nonexistent,” according to Cuculich, contractors are leaning heavily on “institutional” money.
Healthcare spending remains a bedrock of the industry. Power Construction (No. 8) has maintained its consistency through massive projects for Northwestern Memorial, while Skender leveraged a high volume of medical build-outs.
Yet Skender’s view on the office market is contrary to the woeful outlook held by many. The firm just wrapped up the only major ground-up office development in Chicago since 2023 at 919 West Fulton Street, and it’s about to get going on an adjacent conversion of the Lake Street Lofts building at 910 West Lake Street into offices for the same developer, a joint venture of Shanna Khan and Fulton Street Cos.
Skender’s Halik said the company has benefited by filling voids left by other firms that have chased big data center projects outside Chicago or Illinois altogether.
“Deep-pocketed, large organizations, whether they’re in tech or financial or law, they are absolutely reinvesting in their office space,” Halik said. Skender’s runner-up ranking was also propelled by one of the few large multifamily towers to break ground in the region that gave the firm a nine-figure contract for developer Vista’s 370 North Morgan Street in Fulton Market.
Education and public infrastructure are also providing the necessary floor for the industry. Hunt Construction Group (No. 3) is riding the wave of the O’Hare Modernization Program, including a $100 million permit for the airport’s Satellite 1 Concourse. F.H. Paschen (No. 4) and John Burns Construction (No. 13) are keeping their crews busy with Metra station renovations and CTA training facilities.
Interior pivot: rehab over rebuild
As landlords struggle to lure tenants back to the Loop, they are pouring money into trophy amenities.
“Many people are staying where they are and putting money into their existing offices,” Cuculich says. “The rehabilitation of existing spaces has been pretty strong.”
This trend is reflected in Skender’s massive permit count (61 permits) and Executive Construction’s No. 6 ranking. Executive racked up $196 million across 72 permits, the highest permit count of any firm in the top 20. The projects are high-end updates for companies like Google, whose $85 million interior buildout at the Thompson Center is being handled by Skender.
Furthermore, the office-to-residential conversion trend is finally moving from talk to tools. James McHugh Construction (No. 16) is currently converting 65 East Wacker Place into 252 apartments, while Leopardo (No. 11) is tackling a similar conversion at 79 West Monroe Street.
Waiting game
Despite the momentum created by the casino and the Obama Center, the industry is holding its breath. Pressure on the housing stock is building, and while multifamily permits showed a slight upswing in late 2025, the volume is nowhere near what is needed to sustain the city’s long-term growth.
“The investment money, they’re following where developers are going and they’re cool on Chicago right now,” Cuculich said. But he’s still hopeful: “Something has to give.”
Access the comprehensive data set supporting this ranking here. TRD Data puts the power of real data in your hands.