Downtown Is Not Dying
25 office-to-residential conversion projects. 3,900 units. $1.8 billion. 4 million square feet of underutilized commercial space repurposed into homes. 7,000 new residents. $700 million in new annual spending power. That is what Chicago is doing. And Kevin Warren is sitting in Lake Forest telling anyone who will listen that this city cannot support an NFL franchise.
By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-06-11
On June 10, 2026, the Chicago Department of Planning and Development announced the full tally of downtown office-to-residential conversion projects active in the city.
25 projects. 3,900 units. $1.8 billion in value.
Four million square feet of commercial space that nobody wanted turned into homes that thousands of people do.
More conversions in a single year than the previous two decades combined.
The numbers that matter
Roughly 7,000 new residents downtown. Typical household income: above $100,000. Aggregate new annual spending power: approximately $700 million.
These are not projections. These are projects with permits, developers, financing, and move-in dates.
The city that Kevin Warren tells reporters cannot support a football franchise, cannot compete for convention business, cannot host a Super Bowl — that city is adding $700 million a year in new economic activity through the adaptive reuse of its own underutilated assets.
Not through subsidies. Through markets.
What the Bears would say about 4 million square feet
Kevin Warren's team has spent two years arguing that Soldier Field is too small, that the concourses are too narrow, that the lakefront can't accommodate enough luxury suites or club seats or events.
Meanwhile, the city is converting four million square feet of office space into apartments. That is roughly the interior square footage of four new NFL stadiums.
The difference: nobody asked the public to pay for it.
This is the argument Warren does not want to have
The Bears' entire leverage strategy depends on one idea: Chicago needs the Bears more than the Bears need Chicago. The team can walk. The city will cave.
But the data keeps landing on the other side.
Downtown Chicago is not a dying downtown. It is a growing one. LaSalle Street is not empty — it is being rebuilt. The commercial vacancy rate is a problem being solved, not a terminal diagnosis. The lakefront is not "underbuilt" — it is undervalued in Warren's telling, which is not the same thing.
$1.8 billion in private capital just arrived to say so.
The real question
If Chicago can attract $1.8 billion in private money to turn old offices into apartments in a single year, what could it do with the team that wants to stay?
That is the question nobody in Lake Forest wants you to ask.
Because the answer — one century of partnership, a lakefront that cannot be replicated, a fan base that spends $700 million on a good Tuesday — ends the argument.
The city is not the problem. The city is the asset.
And it is not going anywhere.
Source: Chicago Department of Planning and Development, Office-to-Residential Conversion Pipeline Report, June 10, 2026. The full report is available through the Chicago City Data Portal.