The Chicago Tribune reports:
Empty offices and closed storefronts have put the vibrancy of downtown Chicago at stake. Almost 18% of downtown office space was vacant at the end of 2021, according to commercial real estate firm CBRE. The closure of major retailers along the Magnificent Mile, such as Macy’s and Gap, left massive holes in the city’s best-known shopping district.
There's more:
A shift toward housing had started before the pandemic. The share of space in Chicago’s central business district devoted to offices shrank from 79% in 2011 to just under 75% earlier in 2021, while multifamily housing grew from 9% to 16%, according to CoStar data.
Meanwhile, Chicago’s downtown grew faster than any of the country’s other large metro areas between 1980 and 2018, swelling from just over 18,000 residents to more than 110,000, according to a 2020 report by the Brookings Institution.
Square footage is square footage and it will be used for something if it can be used.