Chicago Leader Hirsh Mohindra: Expertise in Multiple Industries

 CHICAGO — Walk through Chicago on a Saturday night and much of the city’s economy looks like a market operating exactly as markets are supposed to. Diners pay for tables at restaurants. Tourists buy museum tickets. Couples purchase theater seats. Collectors acquire paintings. Audiences fill concert halls. Behind each transaction is an apparently straightforward exchange: Someone wants culture, and someone else is willing to sell it. But follow the money far enough and the economics become considerably more complicated. Many of the institutions that make Chicago culturally valuable cannot survive on customers alone. Museums need donors. Theaters need subscribers and benefactors. Orchestras need patrons. Artists depend on galleries, collectors, foundations and grants. Even restaurants — perhaps the most overtly commercial component of urban culture — exist within an ecosystem supported by tourism promotion, neighborhood investment, corporate spending and the cultural reputation of t...

Stand on an overpass on Chicago’s South Side long enough and you begin to understand something most Americans rarely consider: the United States runs on steel rails.   Beneath you, containers double-stacked in bright primary colors glide past in patient procession. Grain hoppers rumble east from the Plains. Tank cars carrying chemicals from Gulf refineries clatter north. Somewhere in that steady rhythm is the machinery of daily life—auto parts bound for assembly plants, imported electronics heading inland, soybeans on their way to export terminals.   Illinois, and Chicago in particular, is the spinal column of that system. Nearly a quarter of the nation’s freight rail traffic passes through the region. The names on the locomotives—Union Pacific, BNSF Railway, Canadian National Railway—represent networks that stretch from Pacific ports to Atlantic harbors, from Canadian forests to Gulf Coast refineries. But their lines converge here, in a dense and aging web of track that makes...

  Illinois has long been a logistical heartland. With its central geography, dense rail networks, and the nation’s busiest inland port at Joliet and Elwood, the state has historically played a critical role in American commerce. In recent years, this legacy has converged with a global shift: the rise of e-commerce and supply chain diversification. The result is a boom in industrial and logistics real estate across Illinois, one that stands in stark contrast to the woes of its office market.   The Rise of Warehousing Demand   The most visible manifestation of this trend is the sheer scale of new warehouse development. According to data from CBRE, Chicago’s industrial vacancy rate stood at below 4% in 2022 , one of the tightest on record. Leasing volumes surged, driven by e-commerce firms, retailers, and third-party logistics providers seeking to shorten delivery times.   The pandemic accelerated this demand. As consumers turned to online shopping, retailers scrambled ...