OK, but How Many Gap Stores Are We Talking About Here?

By Alicia Dorr in News on Oct 23, 2006 4:35PM

For years everyone has been lamenting State Street's loss of vitality. What was once a buzzing business and shopping district became the place where behemoth department stores went to die. But that's all about to change, and drastically.

According to a recent analysis of the street by a brokerage firm, State Street is about to wake the hell up: All of the new retail space being built could reverse years of low vacancy rates, quadrupling them to 17% in two years. Ever since Mills Corp. started actually doing something with Block 37, developers have started to pant like dogs on a hot summer day for the rest of the prime space on State.

But it's an "in with the new" kind of pant. Developers are poised to sweep away the bones of the old buildings and replace them with something new ... as in, it will be hard for the older spaces, especially those off street level, to be leased at all. After years of having very low vacancy rates and historically high rent on State Street, developers are looking to meet their own demand by flooding it with new specialty store space. With the conversion of the old Carson Pirie Scott building and Block 37 already spicing things up, there are more than 500,000 square feet being added this year.

Tentatively, this seems pretty damn exciting. For at least a decade, the struggling street has been unable to attract new stores because there were too many of them scrambling to fit into too little space. The brokerage survey means there could be a breath of life coming for State Street aside from the Block 37 space (who effing knows what's going on there anyway) and the Carson conversion. And that, we say, is good news — unless some jackass thinks it's a good idea to close the street again.

Photo via Chicago.urban-history.org.