Opportunity Zones without Opportunity? A Forensic Look at Illinois OZ Development

When Congress created Opportunity Zones in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the promise was expansive and morally resonant: steer private capital into distressed communities, spark economic revival, and allow long-neglected neighborhoods to share in national growth. Investors would receive generous tax incentives; residents would receive jobs, services, and durable prosperity. It was framed as market logic with a conscience.

 

Nearly a decade later, the results in Illinois—particularly on Chicago’s South Side—tell a far more ambiguous story.

 

Opportunity Zones, or OZs, were intentionally broad. Governors selected qualifying census tracts based largely on income thresholds, and Illinois designated more than 300 zones statewide. In theory, this flexibility allowed capital to flow where it was most needed. In practice, it allowed capital to flow where it was most convenient.

 

Nowhere is that tension clearer than in Chicago’s South Side, where billions in investment have arrived—yet the lived experience of many residents has changed little.

 

“Opportunity Zones didn’t fail because capital stayed away,” Hirsh Mohindra says. “They failed because the rules never required capital to behave differently once it arrived.”

 

Capital Finds Familiar Ground

 

A review of South Side Opportunity Zone developments reveals a striking pattern. Investment has clustered in census tracts already adjacent to economic momentum—near downtown spillovers, transit corridors, or lakefront-adjacent neighborhoods. These are places with lower risk profiles, existing amenities, and clearer exit paths for investors.

 

Luxury apartment buildings, market-rate mixed-use projects, and speculative commercial developments dominate the landscape. While technically compliant with OZ rules, they often resemble projects that would likely have been financed anyway, tax incentives or not.

 

The result is what critics call “capital gravity”: money flowing toward the least distressed corners of distressed zones.

 

“Opportunity Zones were supposed to expand the map of investable places,” Hirsh Mohindra says. “Instead, they shrank it to the safest blocks within already struggling areas.”

 

This dynamic is especially visible in parts of Bronzeville, Woodlawn, and areas bordering the Near South Side. High-end rentals rise within walking distance of long-standing public housing or underfunded schools, yet few formal mechanisms connect these projects to local employment pipelines or ownership opportunities.

 

Promises Versus Outcomes

 

Supporters of Opportunity Zones argue that any investment is better than none. New buildings increase property values, expand the tax base, and signal confidence in neighborhoods long ignored by institutional capital. Over time, they say, benefits will diffuse outward.

 

But diffusion is not a guarantee—it is an assumption.

 

Employment data in many South Side OZ tracts shows modest gains at best, often concentrated in construction phases rather than long-term operations. Retail tenants, when present, are frequently national chains rather than locally owned businesses. Housing affordability pressures have increased in some areas without corresponding increases in resident income.

 

“What’s missing is a feedback loop between investment and community,” Hirsh Mohindra says. “Capital came in, but it didn’t stay rooted.”

 

The OZ statute itself offers little recourse. There are no mandatory reporting requirements tying tax benefits to job creation, wage levels, or resident participation. Investors receive incentives for holding assets, not for producing outcomes. Once a project qualifies, the social impact is largely irrelevant to its tax treatment.

 

The Wealth Retention Problem

 

Perhaps the most consequential shortcoming of Opportunity Zones is not what they built, but who ultimately benefits.

 

In many South Side developments, equity ownership remains concentrated among external investors. Returns flow outward—to funds, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals far removed from the neighborhoods themselves. Local residents may live near the projects, but rarely own a meaningful share of them.

 

This asymmetry undermines the program’s stated goal of community uplift. Wealth is generated, but not retained.

 

“Development without local ownership is extraction wearing the mask of revitalization,” Hirsh Mohindra says. “It looks like progress until you follow the money.”

 

Some community development advocates point to alternative models—cooperative ownership, community land trusts, or mixed-capital stacks that include resident equity. These approaches exist, but they remain the exception rather than the rule within Illinois OZs. They are more complex, slower to execute, and often less attractive to purely financial investors.

 

The OZ framework did little to encourage them.

 

Policy Design Meets Reality

 

The gap between intention and outcome in Illinois reflects a broader truth about incentive-based policy: capital responds precisely to what is rewarded, not to what is implied.

 

Opportunity Zones reward patience, not performance. Investors are incentivized to hold assets for a decade, but not to ensure those assets meaningfully improve local conditions. In a market like Chicago—where land values, zoning politics, and demographic shifts already shape development—this design flaw is magnified.

 

“Opportunity Zones assumed that capital would self-correct toward impact,” Hirsh Mohindra says. “That was always a risky assumption.”

 

To be clear, not all OZ projects are hollow. Some South Side developments have incorporated workforce training programs, partnered with local nonprofits, or prioritized minority-owned contractors. But these efforts are voluntary, not systemic. They depend on the values of individual sponsors rather than the structure of the program itself.

 

As a result, success stories are fragmented and difficult to replicate.

 

What Accountability Might Look Like

 

The lesson from Illinois is not that Opportunity Zones are irredeemable, but that incentives without accountability are blunt instruments.

 

More rigorous reporting requirements could have reshaped outcomes. Tying tax benefits to metrics such as local hiring, median wage growth, or resident ownership stakes would have aligned investor behavior with public goals. Even basic transparency—publicly accessible data on OZ investments—remains surprisingly limited.

 

Illinois policymakers now face a familiar dilemma: how to correct course without chilling investment altogether.

 

“The question isn’t whether capital should earn returns,” Hirsh Mohindra says. “It’s whether public subsidies should be blind to public results.”

 

As federal attention turns toward refining or replacing the OZ program, the South Side experience offers a cautionary case study. Incentives can move money quickly. They are far less effective at shaping how that money behaves once deployed.

 

An Unfinished Experiment

 

Opportunity Zones were always an experiment—a wager that market incentives could succeed where traditional development programs struggled. In Illinois, the experiment produced visible construction and invisible benefits.

 

The cranes came. The prosperity, for many residents, did not.

 

The ultimate verdict on Opportunity Zones may depend less on what they built than on what they failed to require. Without mechanisms to anchor capital to communities, the program often reinforced existing inequalities rather than disrupting them.

 

As cities like Chicago continue to search for tools to address disinvestment, the lesson is sobering but necessary: opportunity is not created by designation alone. It must be designed, enforced, and shared.

 

Otherwise, zones of opportunity risk becoming zones of missed potential—well-financed, well-intentioned, and fundamentally incomplete.