Chicago’s LaSalle Street Bet: Office Conversions as Downtown Strategy

If NYC is rewriting rules citywide, Chicago is running a different experiment: fix downtown by changing what downtown is for. The Loop’s office-heavy identity is being rebalanced, and LaSalle Street is ground zero.

Chicago’s LaSalle Street initiative has been framed publicly as a vision and an implementation pipeline—explicitly acknowledging that downtown needs more residents, more mixed-use, and a better public realm.

Why conversions are the new downtown development

Office towers were built for a 9-to-5 economy. The post-2020 city runs on a different rhythm: hybrid work, experience-driven retail, and neighborhood-like demand for amenities. If offices don’t refill to prior peaks, the solution isn’t to wait—it’s to change the asset’s purpose.

In late 2025, reporting around Loop conversions highlighted large public incentives being sought to make conversions pencil—because conversion costs are real and the value gap is wide. 

LaSalle’s real product: mixed-use gravity

A downtown that is only offices is fragile. A downtown with residents is resilient. Residents create:

• evening foot traffic

• demand for grocery + services

• stable transit ridership

• safer streets through activity

• a stronger case for retail leasing

So the LaSalle strategy is not “save offices.” It’s convert the corridor into a neighborhood—with housing as the anchor.

OUM lens: conversions are “zoning” without rezoning

You can think of office conversions as a functional rezoning: same parcel, new use, new economic base. And like any rezoning, the winners are early movers who buy before the narrative flips.

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