Lots of valid points here, I'll just comment on a couple: My wife and I relocated our family from Chicago to Dallas in 2019. I was a lifelong Chicagoan, Gage Park, Edison Park, Gordon Tech, UIC, CBOT, dad worked for the water dept. I still have businesses in Chicago so I go back and forth. The difference between Chicago and Dallas, Illinois and Texas is a gulf, the gulf of common sense and attitude. I always would boast about being from Chicago, the friendliest big city in the country. No more, Chicago has gotten mean and pissed off. Texas is just way more civil, it actually takes some getting used to when strangers are so polite again.
Second comment, there was a retired Army dentist leasing a space next to my West side Chicago location, he was vying for one of the dispensary licenses. He has the professional resume, and he's black. This is, in theory, the model candidate for one of these licenses. But he's not juiced in.....so he got bumpkus. "We don't want nobody that nobody sent", and he didn't know the right people. Great job Chicago.
Great point about the Pilgrim’s risk taking. I believe it’s a similar spirit in moving from a high to low tax state. I noticed among my fellow northern transplants in North Carolina that we share a certain sense of adventure no matter our age or backgrounds.
“They knew the old place had no hope or opportunity”, so instead of just dreaming about moving some day, my neighbors and I uprooted our lives and made the effort to move a long distance. In my case I didn’t know a single person in North Carolina, but my first goal was not to move to NC, it was to leave Illinois. Big difference. I got lucky in that I unknowingly picked a great spot and don’t have to move again, which I was prepared to do.
There was no place quite like Chicago when it was at its peak, but those days are gone and never coming back. I think it’s now in permanent decline. If the downtown doesn’t recover, all of the large buildings losing tenants will slowly become financially unviable because their taxes and expenses are not going down. There’s already been a few buildings where the owners just gave them back to the lenders, and I expect more of that as office leases are either cancelled or downsized. Currently 25% of Loop storefronts are vacant. Before crime increased, there was the possibility that old buildings could be repurposed as apartments or condos, but that ship has sailed. LaSalle Street and its beautiful old buildings will be hard hit as those buildings need too much investment to turn them into modern office space. My former building at 135 S. LaSalle is rumored to be the next to be given back to its lender.
Lots of valid points here, I'll just comment on a couple: My wife and I relocated our family from Chicago to Dallas in 2019. I was a lifelong Chicagoan, Gage Park, Edison Park, Gordon Tech, UIC, CBOT, dad worked for the water dept. I still have businesses in Chicago so I go back and forth. The difference between Chicago and Dallas, Illinois and Texas is a gulf, the gulf of common sense and attitude. I always would boast about being from Chicago, the friendliest big city in the country. No more, Chicago has gotten mean and pissed off. Texas is just way more civil, it actually takes some getting used to when strangers are so polite again.
Second comment, there was a retired Army dentist leasing a space next to my West side Chicago location, he was vying for one of the dispensary licenses. He has the professional resume, and he's black. This is, in theory, the model candidate for one of these licenses. But he's not juiced in.....so he got bumpkus. "We don't want nobody that nobody sent", and he didn't know the right people. Great job Chicago.
Great point about the Pilgrim’s risk taking. I believe it’s a similar spirit in moving from a high to low tax state. I noticed among my fellow northern transplants in North Carolina that we share a certain sense of adventure no matter our age or backgrounds.
“They knew the old place had no hope or opportunity”, so instead of just dreaming about moving some day, my neighbors and I uprooted our lives and made the effort to move a long distance. In my case I didn’t know a single person in North Carolina, but my first goal was not to move to NC, it was to leave Illinois. Big difference. I got lucky in that I unknowingly picked a great spot and don’t have to move again, which I was prepared to do.
There was no place quite like Chicago when it was at its peak, but those days are gone and never coming back. I think it’s now in permanent decline. If the downtown doesn’t recover, all of the large buildings losing tenants will slowly become financially unviable because their taxes and expenses are not going down. There’s already been a few buildings where the owners just gave them back to the lenders, and I expect more of that as office leases are either cancelled or downsized. Currently 25% of Loop storefronts are vacant. Before crime increased, there was the possibility that old buildings could be repurposed as apartments or condos, but that ship has sailed. LaSalle Street and its beautiful old buildings will be hard hit as those buildings need too much investment to turn them into modern office space. My former building at 135 S. LaSalle is rumored to be the next to be given back to its lender.