Good afternoon, Chicago. ✶
It’s no secret to anyone who has walked downtown recently: Office vacancy rates remain high, including along the La Salle Street corridor. One potential solution — convert the empty buildings into more than 1,000 new apartments and a hotel.
In today’s newsletter, we dig into what could be coming to some historic Loop high-rises and the hurdles developers could face in the process.
Plus, we’ve got reporting on the full slate of candidates for Chicago’s first school board elections, a new musical adaptation at the Goodman Theater and — stay with me here — chocolate-filled pierogi below. 👇
⏱️: A 7-minute read
— Ellery Jones, audience engagement specialist (@elleryrjones)
TODAY’S TOP STORY
La Salle Street is getting 1,000 new apartments, but first comes navigating conversions and code
Holes in the Loop: More than 1 in 5 offices in downtown Chicago were vacant in the first quarter of 2024, a figure which has risen from last year. The ripple effect of these empty spaces have hit restaurants, cultural attractions, transit and other businesses. But some developers think they know a way back to the bustling Central Business District before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Renovate and relocate: The La Salle Street Reimagined program, shepherded by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot and continued by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration, is an effort to reinvigorate the corridor as it and other stretches of downtown grapple with high commercial vacancy rates. The four proposals include 111 W. Monroe, 208 S. La Salle, 30 N. La Salle and 79 W. Monroe streets and represent a combined $528 million in investment, according to Johnson.
Designs within reach: For Chicago’s developers and architects, public-private partnerships to convert a portion of La Salle Street’s office buildings into residential properties are a dream come true, although adaptive reuse projects can come with hurdles.
The costly catch: Older buildings can be plagued with structural issues, and office properties which were never designed for housing require significant changes, from moving elevator shafts to adding windows and plumbing. But cities such as San Francisco, Boston and Chicago have created programs offering incentives to building developers, such as tax increment financing help in the Loop.
A more diverse downtown: “Having market-rate, affordable residences and hotels all together is going to instantly transform the area from a single usage as office into a sustainable mixed-use area,” said Solomon Cordwell Buenz CEO Chris Pemberton. He said he hopes hospitality workers or first-time renters living nearby can help make the Loop more of a home for all Chicagoans.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
- Chicago school board elections update: The city’s first school board elections will feature 47 candidates vying for 10 seats, a number surpassing most expectations and including parents, former teachers and principals, nonprofit workers and a rapper.
- Grubhub to offer Jewel-Osco delivery: Shoppers can order from Jewel-Osco stores following a national partnership between the Chicago-based food delivery app and Jewel-Osco owner Albertsons.
- Sky-Fever game breaks viewership record — again: Just one week after the Chicago Sky and Indiana Fever drew the WNBA’s biggest TV audience in 23 years — 2.25 million viewers on CBS — the teams broke ESPN’s WNBA viewership record with 2.3 million watching at home.
- Remembering Harriette Gillem Robinet: A scientist, civil rights activist and lauded children’s author, Ms. Robinet believed that without knowing history, people can have no perspective on life today. The Oak Park resident died May 17 at 92.
- Four ‘plucked’ from lake: Four people on Jet Skis who were “stranded” on a breakwall were rescued by police marine unit officers Monday near Monroe Harbor. No one was injured, police said.
- 8 killed in weekend violence: Sunday saw 14 people shot — including two shootings less than two hours apart on the same Little Village block, which left one dead and three injured.
- 4 stars for ‘Little Bear Ridge Road’: This deeply beautiful piece of writing is bleakly funny, poetic in its plainness and aching in its intense empathy for the characters, brought to live by a stellar cast, writes Steven Oxman in a review for the Sun-Times
NOW SHOWING 🎭
For ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,’ the path to Goodman Theatre was paved with creative risks
Reporting by Mike Davis | WBEZ
The key to a successful musical adaptation goes deeper than the selection of the source material.
Turning John Berendt’s Southern Gothic novel “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” into a captivating theatrical experience required an award-winning creative team assembled by a native Southerner, director Rob Ashford, and the backing of a trio of Broadway producers.
It took Ashford 10 years to bring “Midnight” to the stage. The production begins previews tonight at the Goodman Theatre and aims to re-create the culturally rich and eccentric world of historic Savannah, Georgia, where the true crime novel unfolds. The musical runs through Aug. 4.
“It just feels like a melange of a lot of different people and things and histories all just kind of living together in a great sexy harmony somehow,” said Ashford. “That’s what it felt like to me. So I thought about how exciting it would be to try to bring that to the stage.”
To summon Savannah’s historic Bonaventure Cemetery for a stage in Chicago (and possibly Broadway down the road), Ashford tapped a gifted musical director, Jason Robert Brown, a partner from the Tony Award-winning show “Parade” for its London run. To write the story for the stage, Ashford recruited MacArthur fellow and Tony-nominated playwright Taylor Mac, while turning to up-and-comer Tanya Birl-Torres, whom he’s known for 15 years, for the choreography.
Ashford charged each member of the creative team with bringing a unique flavor to the project, with the overarching theme of “being comfortable with your true and unique self.”
“We are really pushing as far to the edges of what a musical can do as I’ve ever seen,” said Brown, whose list of Tony accolades also includes the Broadway hit “The Bridges of Madison County.” “I find it very exciting.”
BRIGHT ONE ✨
Caesar Pierogi & Cafe mixes it up with chocolate-filled pierogi and empanadas to antique Polish books
Reporting by Amy Yee
Thousands of books, including antique Polish tomes, gluten-free pierogi, gelato, Belgian drinking chocolate and a wall of tea from around the world are just some of the eclectic offerings at Caesar Pierogi & Cafe in Portage Park.
Owner Caesar Ferrari, who is half Italian and half Polish, opened the restaurant at 5749 W. Irving Park Road in spring 2022. He believed there were no good pierogi to be found in Chicago’s restaurants, even though the city has one of the largest Polish communities outside of Poland.
The restaurant features his recipe for the quintessential Polish dumplings, along with gluten-free pierogi made with rice and buckwheat flour. Besides traditional fillings such as potato and onion and meat, there are also blueberries, chocolate and spinach and feta.
“It’s fun and challenging to make new flavors,” said Cristian Ferrari, 23, who runs the business with his father. “You have to be special in some way, or people won’t come back.”
The restaurant’s menu has grown to include pizza pot pie, empanadas, soup, and in the last few weeks, 200 varieties of tea from around the world, including Japan, China, Nigeria, Brazil and South Africa.
“We would like this place to be a staple in the community. Not just because of the food, but because it makes people happy and they like the space. We’ve done a lot to make it unique and cozy,” Cristian Ferrari said.
YOUR DAILY QUESTION ☕️
The Rolling Stones will roll back into Chicagofor a Soldier Field gig on Thursday, so we want to know: Have you seen the Rolling Stones perform in Chicago? When did you see them — and what was the most memorable part?
Email us (please include your first and last name). To see the answers to this question, check our Morning Edition newsletter. Not subscribed to Morning Edition? Sign up here so you won’t miss a thing!
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Written by: Ellery Jones and Matt Moore
Editor: Esther Bergdahl
Copy editor: Angie Myers
