People still want to invest in the elegance of downtown Chicago. Government has to help them. – Chicago Tribune

After being knocked flat during the pandemic, downtown Chicago finally is ready for a “new level of elegance, personalized, engaging and dedicated to quality.”

It had better be ready. Stefan Gruvberger is banking on it.

Gruvberger is general manager of The LaSalle Chicago, a luxury hotel that opened on June 23 not in the trendy West Loop or River North but in the concrete canyon along LaSalle Street. As its advertising pitch says, this 232-room retreat stands ready to pamper travelers with Frette linens, Technogym equipment and twice-a-day housekeeping service from a staff that provides a generous ratio of one employee for every two guests.

Gruvberger is full of optimism about his hotel’s futureand the inextricably linked prospects for downtown Chicago. “The timing is good,” he told us, while also acknowledging that the opening was postponed for months. The Loop finally is showing signs of life again.

The pandemic has taken a brutal toll on big-city downtowns around the country, and some are making better comebacks than others. Chicago has lagged behind its high-profile peers by many measures, including hotel occupancy. As of May, that statistic finallyreached what boosters at the Chicago Loop Alliance described as a “record high” — meaning the highest level since the pandemic started, not a record high for all time. Talk about small steps.

Still, getting back to 71.3% of the hotel occupancy levels that prevailed in 2019 is progress, and the same is reflected in measures such as pedestrian activity and parking volumes. Anyone walking around the Loop today can feel the difference from the deserted streets of last year or the year before. Judging by the presence of families and the diversity of languages on the sidewalks, tourists are making the Loop a destination again, even if international tourism to the Midwest is far from back to normal.

The lifeblood of the Loop is business, however, and that recovery remains problematic. At just 44% of pre-pandemic levels, office occupancy rates are still terrible, and the work-from-home trend will require landlords to convert office space to residential or other uses, which will take time and investment. Take the example of the Chicago Sun-Times, which just swapped 22,000 square feet of office space for a mere 6,000 in the Old Post Office at 43 W. Van Buren St. downtown, and that’s despite being flush with new philanthropic investment and sharing the space with its new partner, WBEZ. Clearly, the paper’s bosses have concluded that most staffers will work remote in the long term.

Just as the pandemic cut demand for downtown offices, it also has stunted business travel, as companies pocket the savings from moving in-person meetings online.

For Chicago, that trend also threatens the critically important business of conventions and trade shows.

Even the peppy Loop Alliance concedes that the office recovery continues to lag behind other metro areas such as Austin. Convention and trade-show competition is brutal from Orlando and other cities that had fewer COVID restrictions and closures.

What can be done? Chicago is in no position to change the circumstances of corporate America, and PR campaigns promoting the city as a destination for tourists and conventioneers can only go so far in altering perceptions. For the answer, consider the public statements of a business leader who is dumping Chicago.

Billionaire Ken Griffin correctly identified the Loop’s biggest fixable problem: street crime, and the perception of crime. As he told the Wall Street Journal in April, before announcing that his companies would relocate to Miami, “I’ve had multiple colleagues mugged at gunpoint. I’ve had a colleague stabbed on the way to work. Countless issues of burglary. I mean, that’s a really difficult backdrop with which to draw talent to your city from.”

Neither Griffin nor any other business leader has all the solutions. But there is no doubt that Gov. J.B. Pritzker needs to make Chicago’s crime wave a much bigger personal priority than he has, instead of leaving Mayor Lori Lightfoot to shoulder the blame for their collective ineffectiveness. Until the threat abates, office workers and business travelers will have good reason to stay away from downtown, hurting the most important economic engine of Illinois.

Gruvberger, the hotel general manager, is doing his part. His hotel is commanding impressive room rates of $400 and up per night, and the wedding-ready ballroom at the top of the hotel was being booked even before it opened. “The comeback is slow but is now accelerating,” he said. “We have also seen corporate group demand growing and very strong leisure demand.”

Those positive business developments will only last if the Loop can build on its current momentum and make the streets feel safe. An amped-up police presence that does not feel intimidating — especially during the hours when hotel guests are likely to be wandering around town — has to be part of the plan.

Governor, it’s time to step up and work more closely with the mayor to help nurture downtown’s precious “green shoots” like The LaSalle Chicago.

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