CHICAGO—The city's West Loop has been on the rise for years as a hip, creative office market. But the decision of McDonald's, a traditional, corporate behemoth, to leave the suburbs and settle into a new campus on the site of Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studios, has the potential to complete the area's transformation into a fully-rounded neighborhood. In fact, a new map produced by KIG shows developers from all sectors, including office, residential and retail, launching projects throughout the area west of the expressway.

Most new development used to happen on the fringes of downtown just west of the river, but today “it is starting to come from Ashland Ave. and push east,” Susan Tjarksen, KIG principal and managing broker, tells GlobeSt.com. She has also seen a lot more institutional money coming into the neighborhood, which should further fuel expansion. “Institutional money does not like to be the first one in,” but with the advent of McDonald's, and before that Google, these lenders have grown quite comfortable with the submarket.

“The West Loop used to be known for its hoodies and sweatshirts, but now it also has a lot of people wearing two-piece suits,” she adds. “That's always good for a submarket because you then have a more rounded population. You don't have to just appeal to millennials now.”

The luxury housing market in the West Loop shows signs of a coming boom. Many of the employees of McDonald's, for example, will want to walk to work just like their younger neighbors, but many also have higher disposable incomes, enough to intensify the demand for luxury rentals or even condos.

As reported in GlobeSt.com, KIG just helped Guggenheim Real Estate LLC, and its joint venture partners Atlantic Realty Partners and Focus Development Inc., put together a deal to renovate Medical District Apartments, a 410-unit rental community located along Ashland Ave. between Polk and Taylor streets. Tjarksen says it could eventually be a $300 million project and add up to 500 new units.

The thousands of new residents that she expects to settle in the West Loop in the next few years will also transform the local retail landscape. “In the past, retail has languished, unless it was a bar or a restaurant.” But the neighborhood should start seeing new types of retail, such as clothing stores, sprout up in its many low-rise, historic buildings. “All of those things need a lot of foot traffic,” and the workers at Google and McDonalds, among many others, will provide it.

Within five years, Tjarksen believes the West Loop could surpass River North as a destination in many ways. Above all, it has a collection of parks and schools, such as Whitney Young Magnet High School, that will make it a far more family-friendly neighborhood, a place that is not just trendy, but somewhere parents can see themselves working and raising children. “It will have more cachet than River North.”

Instant Insights /

McDonald's Bringing Maturity to West Loop

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