Crain's Chicago Business

Amtrak’s Midwest modernization overhaul received nearly $700 million in federal funding today that will help relocate the passenger rail giant’s maintenance facility to Bridgeport, clearing the way for Chicago White Sox owner-in-waiting Justin Ishbia’s plan for a mixed-use project along the Chicago River. The funding is key to opening up a massive tract of land near where Ishbia plans to combine Amtrak’s 47-acre rail yard at 14th Street with a 20-acre BNSF Railway-owned yard for a megadevelopment, initially anchored by a medical campus, that could eventually add a new White Sox stadium. Crain’s reported in March Ishbia’s private equity firm, Shore Capital, is under contract to purchase the site, which sits across the river from The 78 development, where the Chicago Fire have broken ground on their own stadium and current White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf is seeking to build a ballpark. Ishbia first approached Amtrak about the project last summer. His involvement in pushing for federal funding has accelerated plans for Amtrak to purchase a Union Pacific-owned rail yard in Bridgeport to build a modern maintenance facility to improve passenger transit while clearing the way for redevelopment of the 14th Street site. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/d7tbbER6

Crain's Chicago Business is proud to present our 2026 Notable Leaders in Accounting, Consulting and Law. The work of these 135 professionals shapes business, civic life and the courts. They include firm leaders, trial lawyers, tax advisers, restructuring specialists, corporate dealmakers, consultants and practice heads guiding clients through litigation, transactions, regulatory change and growth strategy. Their expertise spans healthcare, real estate, private equity, technology, financial services, energy, education and the nonprofit sector. Many lead teams, offices and national practices while advising clients on high-stakes matters. Together, these honorees reflect the breadth of Chicago’s accounting, consulting and legal communities and their influence across the region and beyond. Meet the honorees here: https://lnkd.in/dEUyhMx3

A retail store where customers can try out wearable products from tech giant Meta is coming to the Gold Coast. Meta confirmed it plans to open its first Meta Lab store in the Midwest ahead of the holiday shopping season. City records show a venture tied to the Menlo Park, California-based company got a permit to build out a ground-floor retail space at 932 N. Rush St. Meta is hardly the first tech company to go physical, said John Vance, principal at Chicago-based retail brokerage Stone Real Estate, noting that the company is following Apple, Amazon and Google in its foray into bricks-and-mortar retail. Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, recently unveiled new AI-powered smart glasses in partnership with brands Ray-Ban and Oakley. There are eight Meta Lab stores in the U.S., including locations in New York City, New Jersey, Virginia, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Hawaii. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dfVMhbMv

The team behind a membership-based reservation app is betting that enough Chicago diners will pay a premium for access to primetime tables at the city’s hardest-to-book restaurants. Dorsia, named for the fictional impossible-to-book restaurant in Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 book, “American Psycho,” entered the Chicago market on July 15. It launched with 17 restaurants including Alinea, Asador Bastian, Pizz’Amici, Girl & The Goat and Crying Tiger, which all quickly book out. The app partners with select restaurants to hold tables at specific times for its members, who typically gain access 30 days in advance to reservation dates — and in some cases last minute. This comes with a fee and some hoops to jump through, including getting approved on the app. Once approved for membership, people are asked to pay an entry-level annual fee of $200 to access the app and available reservations. They then agree to a minimum spend per person set by each restaurant, typically more than what you might normally pay to dine out, according to Dorsia founder and CEO Marc Lotenberg. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/d6bwKn6z

Essendant, a wholesale distributor of business products formerly known as United Stationers, is signaling that it might soon go out of business, laying off more than 300 workers in the Chicago area. The company is part of office-products giant Staples, which is owned by private-equity firm Sycamore Partners. Essendant told the state of Illinois it plans to lay off 200 workers at its headquarters in Lincolnshire, along with 310 remote employees. It also will close a distribution facility in Carol Stream, which employs 134 workers. “The company has been exploring various strategic alternatives, including potential sale transactions involving certain of the company’s assets and operations, and securing additional capital to avoid liquidation of the company,” Essendant said in a notice to the state of Illinois. “At this time, the company does not know if these efforts will succeed, and the company currently expects that it will cease its operations and close its business … within 14 days of Oct. 3.” A shutdown would not only close the book on a storied local company but also mark another chapter of consolidation of an industry in which Chicago has deep roots. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dd5D-_W2

Like the European countryside, the landscape around Chicago is dotted with castles, although the ones here are centuries younger and usually built not for defense but for fantasy. When the time comes for the families that built modern-day castles to sell them, it sometimes turns into a royal pain, taking years on the market, steep discounts or even, in one case, foreclosure to attract the next laird of the property. That’s been the story with castle replicas built in suburban spots like Oak Brook, Harvard and Schaumburg, as well as the city neighborhoods Bridgeport and Irving Park. “A castle is not for everybody,” said Susan Miller, the Dream Real Estate agent representing a stone castle with turrets and battlements set behind iron gates emblazoned with traditional rampant (or standing) lions in Spring Grove, 64 miles northwest of the Loop. “But you only need the one person who likes the uniqueness of it.” Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dEB2vDJm

Amid a deepening deficit of new housing units in Illinois, a statewide real estate trade group is rolling out an effort to help towns find ways to pick up the pace of adding local housing supply. “The housing shortage gets worse every day,” said Jeff Baker, CEO of the 50,000-member Illinois Realtors, which today launches the Illinois Housing Supply Accelerator. It’s an effort to help local leaders determine what’s holding back construction in their town — such as strict zoning, costly school impact fees or obsolete building codes — and look for solutions. Baker sees widespread construction of new housing units as crucial not only to reining in the fast-rising cost of buying or renting a home in Illinois, but to creating greater housing stability. Illinois is second-to-last among U.S. states on new home building, Crain’s reported last week. Another list, from Zonda and Builder magazine, ranks the Chicago metro area 18th among U.S. metros for homebuilding. For perspective on how little gets built here: the list shows that the Austin, Texas, metropolitan area, which is less than one-third the size of metro Chicago, built two times as many homes in 2025 (14,628 to Chicago’s 7,232). Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dm4nkhX5

Post-pandemic work patterns have left Chicago's urban core with more empty office space than ever before. Now developers are turning vacant, outmoded properties into housing, hotels, and more. And downtown's revival is counting on them. The 24-story 65 E. Wacker Place was the center of Chicago's hat-making industry when it opened in 1928, evolving into a publishing hub where Hugh Hefner once worked and later becoming a mix of boutique office suites. Now it's poised for another new use: Home for hundreds of downtown residents. And it's not just the vintage Art Deco building. Conversions are in the works across downtown. Crain's is tracking 35 — and counting — proposed, underway or recently completed building transformations in the city's urban core totaling thousands of new units and more than $2 billion in new investment. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dbJ3tEjV

Mayor Brandon Johnson today called for a temporary halt to new data center development in Chicago as the city weighs tougher restrictions on the fast-growing industry. Johnson signed an executive order directing his administration to tighten oversight of existing and proposed data centers and write new regulations within 90 days. But a moratorium on new construction and major expansions — which Johnson said should remain in place until those rules are finished — would require City Council approval. The impact of the measures is unclear as the debate over regulating the industry unfolds at the state level and new data center construction has already been limited by Illinois privacy laws that technology giants say are too restrictive. The order, unveiled today during a signing ceremony along Lake Michigan, expands the work of a data center working group, directs cross-departmental review of data centers and orders the administration to publish new rules within 90 days. Johnson also stood with a handful of aldermanic allies calling for a moratorium, which would have to be approved by the City Council, until new regulations are in place. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/d7cA3gXU

Bally’s is using the construction of its River West casino, and the unionized workforce building it, as leverage in its campaign to convince City Hall to reverse course on the legalization of video gambling. The Rhode Island-based casino operator this weekend informed its contractor group, the Chicago Community Builders Collective, it was “resetting the pace of construction of elements of Bally’s Chicago permanent casino,” but the full impact of the reset is unclear. The company also claimed it still plans to open the casino in early 2027. The move is the latest escalation in Bally’s protracted fight with a majority of the City Council over its decision to legalize video gambling machines as part of the 2026 budget, which Bally’s views as upending the legal monopoly on most gambling they won through competitive bidding in 2022. In a written statement, a spokesperson for the company said the “uncontrolled proliferation of video gambling terminals is in breach of the city’s commitment not to expand gaming in the Host Community Agreement and creates uncertainty that could be harmful for Bally’s Chicago prospects.” A source familiar with Bally’s planning said the reset amounts to a “pause” on construction of all components of the campus outside of work on Jefferson Street and the casino, which would delay work on the 34-story, 500-room hotel, entertainment space and restaurants outside the casino itself. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gArc5ZSa