CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Chicago’s downtown has evolved in multiple ways since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For Loop business owners, though, part of turning that evolution into a full recovery means showing the public that downtown is for everyone.
WBBM caught up with some longtime Loop business owners and leaders to find out exactly how they plan to do that.
“The block that we’re on now has, for the most part, made a good comeback,” said Brian Flax, who owns Flax Art and Frame. “I think Central Camera has had a hard go of it because their building had to be renovated, because of the fire in there.”
As of 2023, Flax Art and Frame has been family owned and operated for 77 years. It’s also the only remaining custom frame shop in the Loop. Snuggled on a stretch of Wabash under the L tracks, this block was one of the hardest hit during a period of unrest in May 2020 — a response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Flax had his windows busted out and a good amount of high-value framed items stolen, not to mention the high-quality custom frames. The damage to his store, though, was minimal compared to his neighbor, “Don” Flesch, whose Central Camera — family owned and operated for 123 years — was looted and gutted by fire.
Flesch has since moved back into the original space, with the iconic Central Camera sign above it. Now in his 70s, Flesch has said he’s just focused on moving forward, and even now has expanded his operation to include an onsite photo lab.
These days, Flax said things are going pretty good for him and his store, where he works daily and reports very little criminal activity on his radar. He noted that the area never was “really a big crime area.”
“You see on the news; you see the guys from the surveillance footage driving their cars through the fronts of shoe stores and things like that; you’re not seeing that in the Loop here,” he said. “I’m always aware that whoever walks through that door could be either friend or foe. You have to be a little bit on your guard; you can’t be too naïve about it, but by and large this area is not a high crime area, so I’m pretty confident right now.”
When he was repairing his store in 2020, the thought did cross his mind to install a roll down cage at the entrance. Flax said he opted against doing that, though, because he felt that the cages make it look like “you’re in a bad part of town.”
“I’m willing to risk a break in or two, if that be the case,” he said. “The one thing I stopped doing, is I stopped putting things like guitars in shadow boxes up on the wall, stuff on the wall that was bait for people who would figure they could break in and then hock it somewhere. I just stopped doing that.”
Farther north and west from Flax’s store, he said there are still a lot of empty stores — and data from Stone Real Estate’s annual report on retail vacancies in downtown Chicago backs up his claim. The report found that, in 2022, the Loop’s retail vacancy was almost 27%. In a typical pre-pandemic year, that number was closer to 15%. Stakeholders, though, have been optimistic in efforts to attract new business that hinge on financial feasibility, as they said crime doesn’t seem to be a major downtown concern in 2023, for those who live, work and operate here daily.
“Our new strategy is just to build confidence in the Loop,” said Michael Edwards, CEO of the Chicago Loop Alliance. “Right now we’ve got a little bit of a customer confidence issue. We need to restore that … and I think we can almost guarantee that.”
The Chicago Loop Alliance represents the interests of many business stakeholders in an area bounded by the Chicago River to the north and west, Ida B. Wells Drive to the south, and Lake Michigan to the east. It’s tasked with keeping the Loop a vibrant, global business district and a recognized world class destination.
A key part of maintaining that image: the Chicago Theater District, which Edwards said has lately been something of an understudy to more lingering images of intensified crime during the pandemic, particularly in 2020 and 2021. He added that he believes the current perception of the Loop is based upon “what happened during the pandemic.”
“I think the pandemic, with the murder of George Floyd, some of the civil unrest … people were losing confidence in the Loop, like, who’s in charge?” he said. “So, we have been working hard with the City, the police department, Streets and Sanitation, all the departments to bring order to downtown, and I think we have.”
Edwards pointed to the many people that are coming back downtown for “shows at night, big concerts, [and] community festivals.”
“Over 100,000 people came to our Sundays on State,” he said. “So, people are coming back. They’re feeling more comfortable. We just need more of them to come back.”
Among some of those negative, lingering images, there has recently been a particular phenomenon that’s fairly unique to downtown Chicago — in the form of teens flooding the streets. What may have been called a “happening” years ago is now referred to as “wilding,” and on these rare nights, things do tend to get slightly out of hand.
Kenna Tunis is the director of community engagement with the Chicago Loop Alliance
“There have been incidents with regards to negative situations occurring with youths in the Loop, so we partnered with My Block My Hood My City, they created Downtown Day,” Tunis said. “We coordinated with loads of our businesses who wanted to contribute to mentor kids or show them museums or what it’s like to be an architect for a day. It was very important I suppose to create shared positive experiences with the youth demographic and the business community here.”
Tunis added that it’s a “complicated issue.”
Downtown Day is one of many community-led initiatives that relies on City and business approval and support. The goal: to make sure every young Chicagoan gets an opportunity to experience downtown in a way that doesn’t end with being detained. Mr. Dads Father's Club and Englewood First Responders are among those encouraging positive youth engagement on weekends. My Block My Hood My City, on Downtown Day, brought with them about 1,000 young people and gave each of them a $50 “exploration card” to be used on just about anything.
“Everybody deserves to be here, everybody deserves to have the opportunity to spend time here, this is their city,” Tunis said. “I think it would be unacceptable to do otherwise…it’s just creating those shared positive experiences will really create mutually beneficial situations, greater respect and understanding in downtown … and, hopefully, a really good experience, feeling and a desire to want to come back downtown again.”
Edwards said many of the efforts throughout the Loop in 2023 aren’t focused on tackling any sort of overwhelming crime problem. Similar to the Magnificent Mile Association, which represents businesses just north of the river, the most immediate challenge is convincing the public that crime is relatively low downtown, compared to the rest of the city and even compared to other major city downtowns across the country.
“There’s not that much negative going on downtown,” Edwards said. “It’s a big downtown; lots can happen, we get that, but that’s part of the excitement too.”
According to a Loop Alliance report, Chicago’s Loop was the fastest growing downtown in the U.S. for 2022.
“People have always asked about issues like [crime],” Edwards said. “They have lots of concerns when they're making a huge investment in the Loop.”
Regarding business attraction, Edwards told WBBM that the Loop Alliance reports have shown recovery to nearly reach pre-pandemic levels in a number of areas — but foot traffic is one indicator to watch, as foot traffic can show increases in both the number of wallets downtown and the number of eyes on the street. Crowded, vibrant areas, he added, are often a deterrent to crimes of opportunity, like those presented on the empty downtown streets and CTA train cars of 2020.
In 2023, though, Edwards described crime as “kind of a non-issue.”
“Is it asked? Sure, but they’re also asking about the services that their building is going to provide, or where their employees can park,” he said. “They ask lots of questions, crime or the safety of the location, that’s always been a question, for years.”
He says prospective businesses are convinced of the Loop’s safety, which is a similar tone that the Magnificent Mile Association struck regarding their district, where hesitation over signing on the dotted line has more to do with property taxes than crime.
Edwards added one other note: In Chicago’s downtown, dating back to the city’s inception, there’s a deeply ingrained, proud tradition of protest, which will likely continue for the ages. He said it’s important to recognize that “protest” is not a word equal to “crime.”
“Citizens of Chicago should be very proud that we are an international city that embraces free speech,” he said. “People have a right to protest and, for the most part, they file a permit to do that. The police are engaged; they negotiate a tour; it’s typically on a sidewalk. So, when people see a protest go by, people are just expressing themselves. As an American, and as a person from Chicago, I think we should be really proud of that and we are proud that it happens in the Loop.”
Remember to tune in to WBBM on Thursday night at 7 p.m. for an hour-long, in-depth discussion about the future of downtown.
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