Indiana Gov. Mike Braun discusses the potential relocation of the Chicago Bears to Indiana, highlighting Indiana’s business-friendly setting and contrasting it with Illinois’ excessive taxes and laws on ‘The Backside Line.’
Workplace towers that when offered for a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} are actually altering arms at reductions of 70%, 80%, even 90% throughout main U.S. cities, as greater rates of interest and distant work reshape demand for downtown house.
Few locations illustrate the shift extra starkly than Chicago. There, the markdowns span each period of growth, in keeping with figures first tweeted out by Nightingale Associates.
A century-old workplace constructing within the metropolis’s historic Printing Home Row district, 401 S. State St., just lately offered for simply $4.2 million, down from $68.1 million in 2016, a 94% drop.
The outstanding Loop tower at 311 S. Wacker Drive traded at an 85% low cost, promoting for $45 million in contrast with $302 million in 2014.
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Folks look out towards the skyline from a frozen North Avenue Seashore on Jan. 24, 2026, in Chicago. (Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu/Getty Photographs)
Even newer, high-profile properties haven’t been immune. Boeing’s long-term lease curiosity in 100 N. Riverside Plaza, not the tower itself, offered for $22 million, down from $165 million in 2005, an 87% decline.
And at 300 W. Adams St., a leasehold curiosity within the constructing modified arms for simply $4 million, in contrast with $51 million in 2012 — a 92% low cost.
Taken collectively, the offers illustrate how sharply the economics of downtown workplace actual property have shifted in only a few years, as greater rates of interest and distant work reshape demand.
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Retail house for lease in downtown Chicago on Could 27, 2025. (Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg/Getty Photographs)
The fallout extends past landlords and buyers. In lots of main cities, workplace towers are a cornerstone of the tax base, serving to fund faculties, public security and transit — which means falling property values can ripple by means of native budgets.
And Chicago shouldn’t be alone.
Throughout the nation, downtown workplace buildings are buying and selling at steep reductions. Final 12 months, an 18-story Dallas workplace tower offered for $26.1 million, a 64% low cost from its $73 million sale worth in 2016.
In St. Louis, a 44-story tower offered in 2022 for $4.5 million, a fraction of the practically $205 million it fetched in 2006. Extra just lately, an workplace constructing in downtown San Jose, California, offered for $23.7 million, properly beneath its $80.1 million sale worth in 2017. In Newton, Massachusetts, a three-building workplace complicated modified arms final 12 months for $117.5 million, roughly half of its $235 million worth again in 2020.
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Soldier Discipline previous to the divisional playoff soccer recreation between the Los Angeles Rams and Bears on Jan. 18, 2026, in Chicago. (Kara Durrette/Getty Photographs)
Amid broader uncertainty about the way forward for downtowns, metropolis leaders are additionally working to retain main financial anchors, together with the Chicago Bears.
The workforce is exploring a attainable relocation to Indiana, the place a brand new stadium could possibly be constructed close to Wolf Lake in Hammond, simply throughout the state border.
As property values fall, metropolis leaders face tough decisions: reduce companies, elevate taxes elsewhere, or take up widening price range gaps.
