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Gourmet grocery Fox and Obel gave Loop-bound foodies reason to rejoice when they announced an outlet on State Street, located in the former Carson Pirie Scott building. Hope you didn't count those farm-raised cage-free organic jumbo brown-shell eggs before they hatched, foodies - Crains reports that F&O has pulled out of that deal, along with Australian surf-gear retailer Billabong. (We're sure that this hurts all those Chicago surfers and aficionados of cargo shorts as well, but we've got a shiny nickel on Loop lunchers being more directly affected.)
This leaves a combined 40,000 square feet of space up for grabs; this on top of the nearly half-million square feet of new retail space coming to the State Street corridor in the Sullivan Center and the Block 37 project. Bruce Kaplan, a three-decade leasing agent for retail space with CB Richard Ellis Inc., has the following great news:
"The meltdown in the financial markets and retail world is not coming at the best moment for these two projects...This is, without a doubt, the scariest period in retail that I've ever been confronted with."
Only Flat Top Grill remains as a future tenant in the Carson's building, located at State and Madison. It's not all bad news - the Sun-Times is reporting that the office portion of the building is nearly 80 percent leased, and renovations have "gone well."
Carson Pirie Scott and Company via WallyG.
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Um, what else could occupy 40,000 sq ft of space close to the loop and millenium park? The children's museum maybe? Instead of destroying green space that is suppose to remain free and clear (and spending a fortune in the process), why can't the city pull its head out of its ass and repurpose an already renovated beautiful old building? Doesn't fit into Daley's plans for a lakefront legacy I suppose.
asking rents and what the economy can support are two very disparate things in this city right now.
A correction could and (maybe should?) take place very soon.
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That is a retail space and it needs to be occupied by retailers. You don't just put a musuem in the middle of a major shopping district. Does it look to you like the retailers nearby are the type that focuses on the people who would be going to the musuem (mothers and their children)? No. The State Street/Wabash area is the way that it is in large part because of years of analysis and planning. I find it astonishing that you think that it makes sense just to randomely place something in a space without the slightest thought to whether it fits the area. And you do realize that if that were to be done it means the city would be throwing away millions and millions of dollers in sales tax revenue that it would get from that space, right? Do you think that makes sense? Or would you be the first person to start complaining when the city has to raise taxes to make up for this?