CHICAGO | Economic & Business Development

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by F1 Tommy

Well with that kind of thinking United Airlines should vacate Willis tower and go back to Elk Grove as the local aviation industry is mainly located around O'Hare.(I do not want that but just pointing out why that theory is partly flawed).

Look I get you want as many headquarters to locate downtown as possible, and I also like that idea. But Chicago needs to put most of it's attention into getting companies from other states and countries. The city is encouraging and trying very hard to get companies to move from the suburbs. Since we are in a free market that is fine, but it is not a net gain for the Chicago area when they move.

Actually, all of the United employees that actually work in the airplane flying and maintenance industry are located at O'Hare. Corporate headquarters (sales, marketing, executive, etc) industry workers for United are located where they belong: downtown. Again, you are demonstrating a total lack of understanding of the concepts we are discussing with this straw man. The corporate employees of United have virtually nothing to do with flying or dealing with airplanes, they work in marketing, law, sales, administrative, functions. Thus United gains huge advantages by tapping the downtown labor pool which is teaming with marketing, legal, sales, and administrative experts.

So actually no, it is a net gain because United is a stronger company because of it. And all the companies downtown near United also benefit from the ancillary effects of United's employees and business. If it weren't better for United then why did United locate there? Why did MCD locate downtown? This isn't up for you to debate or decide, this is hard fact determined by people with advanced degrees doing statistical studies. This is evidenced by the fact that cities exist and that the most prosperous cities are the largest and densest cities.

[OrdoSeclorum]

Originally Posted by F1 Tommy

Since we are in a free market that is fine, but it is not a net gain for the Chicago area when they move.

It's best for Chicago if we grow organic, homegrown businesses. We can help with that by investing in universities, university research, secondary education and reducing zoning regulations that make it difficult to build apartments in most of the city.

It's not as good--but still quite good!--if businesses relocate to the suburbs from out of the area. It's even better if they relocate downtown from outside the metro area, because a business downtown has more impact due to agglomeration effects and other knock-on benefits. We get more bang for the buck on infrastructure spending down here, for example. And if high-productivity businesses are located downtown, that removes pressure on real estate and infrastructure in the suburbs, reducing the cost of operating call centers, warehouses and Ikeas in Schaumburg. Things like this reduce the drag on productivity in the whole metro area.

For that same reason, it is still literally a net gain for the metro area if a company relocates downtown from the burbs, even though it's not as good as the out-of-area-relocation example you described and that we all like to see happen.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

I know that, but it's still centrally located, in fact, their backoffice is located right next to many other back offices for financial firms that don't need to be in Manhattan. So in that sense, it actually makes more sense to locate that Goldman office in Jersey because it's more central to an industry cluster for financial firm back offices. But move their actual HQ deep into Jersey? They would immediately fall apart as talent just chooses to go to other companies still in Manhattan.

Yeah I know - I was just saying using Financial industry + NJ is probably not the best example. Another industry is probably better anyway. Newark is around 15 miles from Manhattan and while not a total powerhouse they do have a few Fortune 500 companies HQ'd there (Prudential Financial and PSEG). Newark is kind of borderline and most people don't like Newark, but I feel like it's kind of tolerated more than say...Deerfield. Oddly enough.

Anyway, according to a few of my coworkers (and one born/bred NYer), these companies actually went to Jersey City because of 9/11 ( I work in the financial industry). Kind of like a security thing at the time. However, a lot are located there so it is its own thing. Not only is Goldman Sachs there but so is JP Morgan, Citi, Bank of America, ETrade, TD Ameritrade, UBS, BNP Paribas, AIG, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity, Societe Generale, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays, etc. I think a lot of people who aren't familiar with this would be shocked at how many financial firms have set up sizable offices there instead of just another building in NYC. My first 4 months on the job were actually in Jersey City and I had absolutely no idea until A few weeks in. It wasn't like this before 9/11. Weirdly enough too, a little up the road in Weehawken, NJ you have offices like UBS, Citigroup, Accenture, etc.

But in general it's different than the middle of nowhere so I'm not really arguing with you. Jersey City is kind of like a larger Evanston to me without the awesome university. Kind of location/urban wise at least and you'd be surprised how many people don't mind living there. I work with a ton of people who live or lived there - some even moved from Manhattan to there LOL.

[F1 Tommy]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Actually, all of the United employees that actually work in the airplane flying and maintenance industry are located at O'Hare. Corporate headquarters (sales, marketing, executive, etc) industry workers for United are located where they belong: downtown. Again, you are demonstrating a total lack of understanding of the concepts we are discussing with this straw man. The corporate employees of United have virtually nothing to do with flying or dealing with airplanes, they work in marketing, law, sales, administrative, functions. Thus United gains huge advantages by tapping the downtown labor pool which is teaming with marketing, legal, sales, and administrative experts.

You do realize they have the operations center in Willis Tower and the corporate types are at 77W Wacker. The operations center is full of specialized airline only people. Im sure they were tapping into the huge Airline dispatcher and operations planning community that was living downtown. Although part of what you are saying is true your arguments are not 100% correct. United got a steal on the lease and tax breaks from the city to move.

[F1 Tommy]

I think the way Boeing did it made the most sense. They moved only the corporate headquarters downtown from Washington state. They left pretty much everything else where it fit the company best, although as many have said we have a lot of software/marketing/legal ect. talent downtown so they could have moved even more.
But we have very little if any aircraft engineering design talent downtown as it is specialized.

[cmmcnam2]

You do realize they have the operations center in Willis Tower and the corporate types are at 77W Wacker.

Uh... no: https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly...dquarters.html

[F1 Tommy]

Originally Posted by cmmcnam2

Uh... no: https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly...dquarters.html

You are correct, my mistake. They moved out when they moved to Willis. My point still remains about the specialized airline employees at Wills Tower and the main reason for the move.

[Vlajos]

This conversation is really stupid. FTD is moving their HQ because they think it's good for the company. Very likely due to the fact that nearly 10Million people have an easier time getting to downtown Chicago than to DG. No one forced them to move and as far as I can tell, there are no incentives for the move.

End of the discussion.

[F1 Tommy]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

This conversation is really stupid. LTD is moving their HQ because they think it's good for the company. Very likely due to the fact that nearly 10Million people have an easier time getting to downtown Chicago than to DG. No one forced them to move and as far as I can tell, there are no incentives for the move.

End of the discussion.

You mean FTD... Good point...I will stop.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

This conversation is really stupid. LTD is moving their HQ because they think it's good for the company. Very likely due to the fact that nearly 10Million people have an easier time getting to downtown Chicago than to DG. No one forced them to move and as far as I can tell, there are no incentives for the move.

End of the discussion.

Yep. Exactly. I'm sure they did actual analysis to back up their move. Big companies don't just shoot from the hip and randomly decide these things.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by F1 Tommy

You mean FTD... Good point...I will stop.

Damn, bad typo on my part!

[IrishIllini]

Per usual I agree with Vlajos. There's really no reason for any of our largest companies to be out in the burbs anymore. The city isn't stigmatized like it has been in the past and no one wants a hellacious commute on 55/90/94/290/294. We're fortunate to have a great commuter rail network in place, so lets put it to use. Lets also capitalize on the synergies of having hundreds of thousands/millions of qualified workers concentrated downtown. NYC is what it is because of the concentration of talent. We have everything we need to keep that going here.

[Vlajos]

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...s-going-public

Illinois really needs to legalize, regulate and tax adult marijuana use.

[Vlajos]

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...obs-in-chicago

A Tampa logistics company is opening an office in downtown Chicago, with plans to add 80 jobs over the next year.

[marothisu]

Facebook's on a Chicago hiring binge

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...ers-in-chicago

Social media giant Facebook has been hiring a slew of recruiters in Chicago and is poised to add hundreds of employees in the Windy City.

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company has hired 25 recruiters in Chicago just since the beginning of this year, and more than 40 since early 2017, according to LinkedIn profiles that list the recruiters' start dates.

Facebook is plucking recruiters from posts at a range of Chicago companies, but especially big ones that have strong technology, engineering and software staffs. Grainger, Discover Financial Services, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois, Civis Analytics, Echo Global Logistics and Mastech Digital are among the companies that have recently lost recruiters in the Chicago area to Facebook.

"It's aggressive," Integra Advisors Managing Partner Peter Friedman says of Facebook's Chicago recruiter hiring spree. He estimates it gives Facebook the ability to hire 500 to 1,000 workers in the city in a short period. Friedman, who is based in Short Hills, N.J., and formerly worked in Chicago, says he sees Facebook increasingly competing for talent in his financial services sweet spot, and he suspects the company is targeting those professionals, among others, in Chicago's trading ecosystem of exchanges, market-makers and hedge funds.

Among those hired in Chicago is one executive, Tony McNeal, whose title is "global head of technical recruiting," and a couple of the recruiters are listed as recruiters of recruiters. Many of the freshly hired Chicago recruiters appear to be focused on hiring "technical" employees. Their titles showed they are specialists in hiring engineers, software developers and data scientists.

That is a lot of recruiters. Hoping that a lot of them are hired so they can hire up the Chicago office to be hundreds strong and not just making Chicago into a recruiter hub.

[10023]

Originally Posted by F1 Tommy

Jesus, my main point is moving FTD 15 miles east will make little difference to the company or it's bottom line or the local metro Chicago economy. They already have employees living near Downers Grove, so commute times will not be cut and the employees they have will be pissed off. 2 pages of "opinions" do not change that fact. Chicago needs to stop doing what the suburbs did during the great exodus from the city, poaching local companies. Chicago needs to look outside the state and country for prospects.

Companies moving from the suburbs to downtown Chicago is great for Chicago’s economy (screw the suburbs). And it’s great for regional infrastructure and the environment, because those people can then commute by rail rather than car.

[Justin_Chicago]

Coinbase to rebuild infrastructure in Chicago

San Francisco-based Coinbase is making a big move into Chicago, bringing the backbone of its system to the city.

Coinbase plans to transfer its current exchange to Chicago and overhaul it using the city's trading tech talent to upgrade the matching engine, says Paul Bauerschmidt, who was recently hired to oversee the company's new Chicago office. The rebranded Coinbase Markets infrastructure will be rolled out over the next year.

Bauerschmidt, who was recruited by Coinbase in October, was formerly head of futures exchange CME Group's swaps execution facility, and more recently, managing director of products and services at Chicago-based Eris Exchange. He will head the product side of the business in Chicago and expects it to expand from six employees today to about 35 over the next year, and 90 to 100 in the city in three years, he said.

Another major U.S. exchange is also migrating to Chicago. San Francisco-based Kraken recently hired Steve Hunt, Jump Trading's former chief technology officer, to plant a stake in the city and pursue recruiting. It was also a big sponsor this month of the annual Chicago Trading Show, which drew nearly 1,200 attendees—its largest crowd ever.

Article: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...ure-in-chicago

[OrdoSeclorum]

Originally Posted by Justin_Chicago

Coinbase to rebuild infrastructure in Chicago

San Francisco-based Coinbase is making a big move into Chicago, bringing the backbone of its system to the city.

Article: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...ure-in-chicago

As goofy as a lot of the Bitcoin-as-investment-or-revolutionary-fulcrum discussion is, digital currencies or blockchain-based accounting (or who-knows-what else, but in that realm) are going to be significant in some way in the future. These sorts of small, early infrastructure or geographic advantages sometimes lead to unforeseen empire creation.

[moorhosj]

Australian tech company that just raised $18 million for:

Ansarada has created two AI-powered enterprise software platforms designed to minimize risk and increase efficiency for businesses during the dealmaking process.

They are looking to grow from 20 people to around 70 by the end of the year. Also:

Ansarada is the latest in a growing number of foreign companies choosing Chicago for their North American headquarters. Belgian sales enablement technology company ShowPad announced its move to the Windy City last fall. IntuiLab, a French adtech firm, opened its North American HQ in the Loop a few months ago. Booksy’s top brass and headquarters moved from Poland to Chicago last year.

Edit: added link

[the urban politician]

^ Please provide a link to that article