The Chicago City Council approved on Thursday Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto’s plan to build a 22,000-seat soccer stadium on The 78, the South Loop megadevelopment site along the South Branch of the Chicago River. It was the Fire’s last major hurdle before construction crews could break ground.
Council members also cleared the way for several developers to create hundreds of new apartments in the downtown financial district. The projects are part of LaSalle Street Reimagined, an effort started under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot to transform aging office towers along LaSalle Street into a new residential neighborhood.
Mansueto wants the stadium at The 78 finished in time for Major League Soccer’s 2028 season. The $750 million project has been on the fast track since it was announced in June, getting green lights from the Chicago Plan Commission, the city council’s zoning committee and the full City Council all in the past week.
Developer Related Midwest is also celebrating. The council’s vote finally secures an anchor tenant for The 78, a vacant 62-acre plot that it’s controlled for years.
Other major proposals for The 78 stalled or fell through, including one for a new Chicago White Sox ballpark, and another for the University of Illinois’ Discovery Partners Institute, a $250 million high-tech research hub. The institute ditched The 78 in favor of South Shore’s new quantum computing campus.
Related Midwest President Curt Bailey said he envisions an $8 billion community rising up around the Fire’s privately financed riverfront stadium. The 78 will eventually host thousands of new units, a half mile of public riverfront between Roosevelt Road and Chinatown’s Ping Tom Memorial Park, six acres of public open space, walkways, bike paths and new roads.
Some details still need to be ironed out before that vision takes shape.
The original 2019 redevelopment agreement between the city and Related Midwest called for the developer to spend up to $551 million rebuilding the new neighborhood’s transportation infrastructure, including the construction of a new CTA Red Line stop and a realignment of nearby Metra train tracks, before getting reimbursed by city tax increment financing funds. Bailey told the Chicago Plan Commission last week that the original transportation plan had become too costly and was no longer needed. Ciere Boatright, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development, said the 2019 agreement would be renegotiated.
The new redevelopment plan has critics. Dan Lurie, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Planning Council, said in a September 16 letter that meetings held over the summer didn’t provide community members enough opportunities to weigh in on Related’s new vision. He advised reviving the Community Advisory Council, a body of local stakeholders established by Lightfoot.
“As this development progresses, the (Community Advisory) Council should be re-instituted to ensure community expertise is central in guiding this important project,” Lurie said.
Mayor Brandon Johnson has also kept moving forward with Lightfoot’s LaSalle Street plans.
The City Council green lit on Thursday Primera Group’s proposal to use up to $67 million in TIF funds to transform the upper floors of the Clark Adams Building, a 41-story office tower at 105 W. Adams St., into 400 units, including 121 units affordable to low- and moderate-income Chicagoans. Like many Central Loop office buildings, the nearly century-old Clark Adams suffered from a soaring vacancy rate as tenants moved into modern towers in the West Loop.
Also approved Thursday was Riverside Investment & Development’s proposal to use up to $98 million in TIF funds to reconstruct the historic Field Building at 135 S. LaSalle St. into 386 units, including 116 affordable units. Bank of America, the 44-story building’s largest tenant, departed in 2020 for a West Loop tower, leaving the building mostly vacant.
Both LaSalle Street development teams will use a combination of TIF funds, private investment and historic tax credits to complete their projects.
Other LaSalle Street Reimagined adaptive reuse projects approved this year include the historic Harris Trust and Savings Bank building at 111 W. Monroe St., and The LaSalle Residences at 208 S. LaSalle St.
