The 2024 ruling striking down the law as unconstitutional had been on hold pending appeal, so Wednesday's reversal does not change the status quo. The law remains in effect, as it has been the past 15 years, as the legal fight continues.

Enactment of a 2011 anti-union state law, championed by Republicans, sparked weeks of protests and made Wisconsin the center of a national battle over union rights.

That law, known as Act 10, effectively ended most public employees′ ability to bargain for wage increases and other issues, and forced them to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits.

Supporters of the law say it gives local governments more control over workers and the powers needed to cut costs. They argue that repealing the law, which allowed schools and local governments to raise money through higher employee contributions for benefits, would bankrupt those entities.

Opponents argue the law has hurt schools and government agencies by stripping employees of the right to collectively bargain over pay and working conditions.

Christina Brey, a spokesperson for the unions that brought the lawsuit, said they remain confident on the merits of the case and that they are considering all available options.

"Wisconsin is better when all employees have a say in our workplaces, whether about class sizes in our schools, safety on the job, hours or any other number of areas," Brey said. "Public service workers across the state won't stop until we regain free, fair and full collective bargaining rights to negotiate with our employers."

Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who introduced and championed the law, praised the decision.

"This ruling is a major win for the hard-working taxpayers of Wisconsin and the people they elect to run our schools, state, and local governments," Walker said in a text message.

All five of the Democratic candidates for governor this year have vowed to repeal the law if elected. The primary is Aug. 11.

The law was Walker's signature legislative achievement, catapulting him onto the national political stage and spurring an unsuccessful attempt to recall him from office. Walker used the furor to mount a brief, ill-fated run for president that ended in 2015.

The Republican-controlled Legislature approved the law despite the massive protests that went on for weeks and drew as many as 100,000 people to the state Capitol.

The law effectively ended collective bargaining for most public unions by allowing them to bargain solely over base wage increases no greater than inflation. It also disallowed the automatic withdrawal of union dues, required annual recertification votes for unions, and forced public workers to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits. It led to a dramatic decrease in union membership across Wisconsin.

The law has withstood numerous legal challenges over the years, but this is the first since the Wisconsin Supreme Court flipped to liberal control in 2023.

The lawsuit, filed by seven unions and three union leaders, argued Act 10 should be struck down because it creates unconstitutional exemptions for firefighters and other public safety workers. Attorneys for the Legislature and state agencies countered that the exemptions are legal, have already been upheld by other courts, and that the case should be dismissed.

The Legislature said in court filings that arguments made in the current case were rejected in 2014 by the state Supreme Court. The only change since that ruling is the makeup of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, attorneys for the Legislature said.

The three-judge appeals court panel ruled in a 2-1 decision to overturn a December 2024 ruling from Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost, saying the challenged provisions of the law did not violate equal protection guarantees of the Wisconsin Constitution.

The lower court "had no legal basis" to declare the law unconstitutional, the appeals court said.

The Wisconsin Legislature had a "rational basis" for only placing certain public safety workers under the law, the appeals court said.

"Courts must respect both precedent and our role in deferring to the Legislature's fiscal policy decisions," the appeals court said.

Appeals Court Judge Shelley Grogan said in a concurring opinion that the timing of the lawsuit was "to say the least, suspect." The lawsuit was filed in November 2023, three months after the Wisconsin Supreme Court switched from majority conservative control to a majority of liberal justices.

"Renewed attempts to attack Act 10 on already-rejected bases simply because the composition of our supreme court has changed must be rejected," Grogan wrote. "A law's constitutionality does not ebb and flow with a court's composition, and the judicial branch must not be used to advance political agendas on either side of the political spectrum."

Appeals Court Judge Lisa Neubauer, the lone liberal on the three-judge panel, dissented, saying the lower court was correct. She said the Legislature made "arbitrary and irrational distinctions" by taking away collective bargaining rights from some public employees but not others.

Most people under perhaps the age of 35 have never known the site as anything other than a '90s-era shopping center grafted onto parts of an old industrial complex, anchored by a Bed Bath & Beyond and the original location of the Goose Island Brewery.

But back in 1994, 1800 N. Clybourn Ave. was also a demolition site as the rest of that old industrial complex — which had housed a festive indoor mall with a high-end restaurant and an off-Loop stage theater — was leveled to make way for the more recent shopping center. The 1800 Clybourn mall had come onto the scene in Chicago with much fanfare in the late 1980s, only to last a mere five years while its successor development with its national-chain anchor persevered for more than 30.

Unto themselves, the changing developments at 1800 N. Clybourn Ave. represent a microcosm of 40 years of changing development priorities on the Clybourn Corridor as a whole, and in Chicago and beyond in general. Retail development prevailed over industry, big-box stores and strip malls prevailed over creative retail with entertainment, and today, building housing has prevailed over retail as the priority for urban development advocates.

The Clybourn Corridor: From trades to trends

Among the northwest-southeast diagonal thoroughfares that cut through Chicago's North and Northwest sides, Clybourn Avenue is not very long, and for much of the 20th century was not very interesting. It is not a main street extending out into the suburbs like Lincoln Avenue or Milwaukee Avenue, and it's too short and too far removed to serve as an alternative to the Kennedy Expressway like Elston Avenue.

The two endpoints of Clybourn Avenue are best known for landmarks that aren't there anymore. To the northwest, at Belmont and Western avenues, the roller coasters, Shoot-the-Chutes and parachute drop of the Riverview amusement park once stood beckoning — but not since 1967. To the southeast, at Division Street just west of Sedgwick Street, formerly stood the imposing high-rises and mid-rises of the Cabrini-Green public housing development, which by 2011 had been completely leveled except for the Cabrini Rowhouses.

Little has been written about Clybourn Avenue from the point of view of Cabrini-Green residents, but plenty of words have been printed emphasizing anxiety surrounding the street because of its proximity to Cabrini-Green and the association of the housing project with crime, gang activity and gun violence.

Along its path, Clybourn Avenue fronted another public housing development — the Lathrop Homes near the six-way intersection with Damen Avenue and Diversey Parkway, which are now partially upgraded and partially vacant.

But going southeast beyond the intersection with Wrightwood Avenue, Clybourn was defined for most of the 20th century as an industrial district. Motorola had its military electronics division just southeast of the Lathrop Homes. Northwest of Fullerton and Ashland avenues, Mitchell Mfg. made radios and table lamps, while the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company operated on where else but Terra Cotta Place. A Butternut Bread factory stood at Webster Avenue. Ludlow Typograph had a plant near Magnolia Avenue, and Chicago Boiler Company operated near Racine Avenue and Cortland Street, while frame and mirror manufacturer InterCraft had a plant at Wisconsin Street.

Also near Racine Avenue and Cortland Street, A. Finkl & Sons Steel, with its foundries, and General Iron, with its junk cars waiting to be shredded, were going strong until recently. But much of the industry on the strip was gone by 1978, when Jay Goltz opened Artists' Frame Service at Clybourn and Clifton avenues.

While Goltz said the crime along Clybourn near Cabrini-Green was bad enough to drive a McDonald's out of business in the late '70s, the stretch at the edge of Lincoln Park that became known as the Clybourn Corridor was not known for crime. Instead, it was known as a deserted strip of husks of departed industry and a destination for high-speed drag racing enabled by the lack of cross-streets for several blocks.

"At that point in time, Clybourn from about 5 o'clock on Friday until Monday morning was a drag strip, and you took your life into your own hands driving down Clybourn because often, you saw more headlights barreling towards you at very high speed," said developer Tem Horwitz, who came on the scene about five years after Goltz.

Goltz said when he opened Artists' Frame Service, the rent was cheap, at $200 a month for 2,000 square feet. He said for a business strip to take off, it needs to be near dense housing, proximity to mass transit, or ample parking. The Clybourn Corridor has the North/Clybourn CTA Red Line stop, but Goltz said the most important was, at that time, plentiful parking.

"All of a sudden, Clybourn emerges — I was the first one to go on Clybourn," Goltz said. "You could park your car, and that being a destination business worked."

The momentum soon began to build for a transformation. In 1983, developer Horwitz purchased a seven-story building at 1872 N. Clybourn Ave. that had once been a Baldwin piano factory and redeveloped it into loft residences. Goltz said the project was met not with mere skepticism, but with outright dismissal.

"People were doubled over laughing: 'Did you hear they're putting condos on Clybourn? Ha, ha, ha!'" he said. "And suddenly, they're all sold out."

Clybourn took off. Goltz said when he first opened Artists' Frame Service — now one of several businesses that make up the Goltz Group — people asked him with shock, "You're on Clybourn?!" A few years later, he said, people were saying the very same words with inflection conveying the opposite meaning: "Ah, you're on Cly-bourn!"

Not everyone was quite so excited about this trend. Some of the manufacturers that remained in operation along the Clybourn Corridor worried about their future in the area if zoning changes to allow for residential or commercial uses proliferated.

In a 1991 publication, social worker and planner Donna Ducharme wrote that her Local Employment and Development Council (LEED) had endorsed the Clybourn Lofts project, but became alarmed when development started taking off.

"The idea of industrial displacement was not easily accepted. The prevailing view was that all industry wants to leave the city and that Chicago would inevitably have a service-sector economy because all manufacturing is either dying or dead," Ducharme wrote. "Nobody had thought of industrial displacement as a cause of job loss or relocation."

The threat of the U.S. losing manufacturing power and falling into a "service economy" due to factors like deregulation, automation, and offshoring was a widespread fear in the 1980s. Within the microcosm of Clybourn Avenue, there was a fear that the departure of factories would leave well-paid workers high and dry, competing for low-wage service jobs as the communities where they'd lived and worked gentrified and left them behind.

In her 1991 article, Ducharme quoted one resident of the Clybourn Corridor area: "I used to have a $75 apartment in the ... area and I walked 1 1/2 blocks to my job. ... That $75 apartment is now $1,700 and the job where I had a good union wage is now a condominium. The choice is this: working at a good manufacturing job or working at a service industry job to get McDonald's wages."

There were other concerns besides the potential loss of jobs. As the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky wrote at the time, higher-value residential and commercial operations increased property taxes for everyone. Meanwhile, published reports note that new neighbors in the Clybourn Corridor area clashed with industrial operations and complained to the alderman about noises, smells and even aesthetics.

Goltz said at one point, a plumbing supplier in the area got a call from a resident of a new condo who said, "I don't like the color of your roof."

LEED proposed what became known as a Planned Manufacturing District, which was passed and established in 1988 with the backing of Ald. Edwin Eisendrath (43rd). The PMD covered 115 acres between Clybourn Avenue and the North Branch of the Chicago River, from Webster Avenue to North Avenue. Within the district, zoning prohibited residential development and placed restrictions on commercial uses in an effort to protect the manufacturing economy in the area.

Goltz said the PMD succeeded for a while. But Horwitz was not a supporter, and said it amounted to a futile attempt to hang onto the past and resist change.

"I thought it would be a wonderful way of reenacting all of the success of East Germany and its industrial programs," Horwitz said. "In other words, I thought it was 50 years too late."

Commercial development continued on the Clybourn Corridor, now red hot and booming by the mid- to late 1980s. Chicago Bears safety Gary Fencik was a partner in The Hunt Club Bar & Grill near Racine and Cortland, while soccer star Karl-Heinz Granitza opened the French-inspired brasserie Cocorico nearby. At the present-day PAWS Chicago site, Thunderbird Bar & Grill was described in the Chicago Tribune as featuring dancing and four bars. Contemporary news reports heralded the coming of a fine dining boom on Clybourn.

Meanwhile, an upscale Treasure Island grocery store opened in the Market Square development between Wayne and Lakewood avenues. At Webster Avenue, the Webster Place movie multiplex opened where the Butternut Bread factory had once stood, while the legendary Pequod's Pizza took over a historic building and became a destination steps away. Just to the southeast, Pier 1 Imports and other chic retailers opened at The Foundry shopping center.

Eventually, even businesses that had been around for generations started to get unexpected attention. Goltz remembered that after Edith's Bar-B-Q — an unassuming rib joint at 1863 N. Clybourn Ave. that had been open since 1969 — got written up in Chicago Magazine, he saw a woman in a fur coat pulling up in a Cadillac to try the ribs.

"It was a rickety old rib place, but they thought it was the place to go for ribs now," said Goltz.

Along with all this development came an influx of new neighbors moving into attractive housing nearby.

This was the world in which the 1800 Clybourn mall, designed to be a destination unto itself on the destination Clybourn Corridor strip, was born.

1800 Clybourn: "Shop, Eat, Play"

The 1800 Clybourn mall was developer Horwitz's brainchild.

"I thought that there was a market for small retail and what essentially would be a new kind of urban mall, meaning that it would be enclosed, that it would be smaller than the giant suburban malls, and would have retailers that fit the demographics of that part of emerging Lincoln Park," he said.

The site Horwitz and his firm, Horwitz-Matthews, chose was another old industrial building, at Clybourn and Sheffield avenues and Willow Street. The building was first constructed in 1915 for the Gibson Spring Manufacturing Co., and later augmented with six smaller structures and repurposed as a Turtle Wax factory. No manufacturing jobs were displaced for the mall project, as Turtle Wax had left the complex behind years earlier and the complex was sitting vacant and up for sale.

At the time, the repurposing of old inner-city buildings into retail centers with local merchants, food, and entertainment was a trend as cities sought to reboot their downtown cores. In the late 1970s, developers James Rouse and Benjamin Thompson pioneered the concept of the festival marketplace, described in a 1990 edition of Governing Magazine as "a project that mixes specialty shops and clothing stores, restaurants and food stands in a colorful setting designed to entertain customers rather than provide the necessities of life."

In Boston, the Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market complex, which dated back to 1826, was so dilapidated that it was set to be torn down, Boston Magazine noted. But the complex instead became Rouse and Thompson's first festival marketplace in 1976, with specialty shops, food stalls, and vendors with pushcarts.

Rouse and Thompson launched a similar experiment at the South Street Seaport in New York City, and others in cities of various sizes across the country — some in repurposed buildings, others in purpose-built structures. Rouse also proposed a festival marketplace for Chicago's Navy Pier more than a decade before its reopening as an A-list tourist attraction, but the proposal never made it through City Council.

While 1800 Clybourn never called itself a "festival marketplace," Horwitz and project manager William Rogers emphasized that it was intended to be more than just a mall. The slogan, printed in ads and on banners attached to parking lot light poles, was, "Shop. Eat. Play."

As documented in a contemporary Chicago Tribune report, work to turn the old factory complex into a festive new $18 million mall began in August 1986. Architectural firm Pappageorge Haymes Ltd. told the newspaper that the plan was to create "a visual playground that moves merchandise."

The Goose Island Brewery at the far end of the mall along Marcey Street opened first, in May 1988. Founded by John Hall as one of the first small breweries in the Midwest, the facility featured both brewing operations and an adjoining restaurant and pub.

In April 1989, the rest of the mall opened with great fanfare, and with "strolling musicians, tumblers and magicians" offering performances in the atrium, as described by the Tribune.

The interior of the mall was a striking juxtaposition of exposed brick walls and concrete stairways and columns that suggested the factory that the space had formerly housed, alongside decorative color schemes evocative of the Memphis Group aesthetic that helped define the 1980s — bright primary colors that the Tribune described as "safety yellow and primer red," checkerboard patterns, glass block surfaces glowing over bright blue light.

Concrete ramps and skywalks swept and wound through the complex, connecting three levels of stores, eateries, and entertainment venues. The stark industrial architecture was trimmed with tropical greenery, ornamental pools, and contemporary sculpture — all under a skylit truss roof that kept the space bright and sunny.

There was even a surprise among the twists and turns of the mall in the form of a saltwater fish tank.

"There was a wonderful aquarium down on the lower level that you sort of walked around and ran into that you wouldn't expect to find in a shopping center — just really nice, interesting touches," Rogers said.

The exterior of the mall featured a blue glazed ceramic entry portal grafted onto the old factory building, with the mall's "1800" branding prominently displayed. The two crenellated masonry towers from the old factory were adorned with cuboid beacons that resembled Japanese windscreens.

In the parking lot across Willow Street, a solar-powered rotating sign announced the mall with its logo resembling three concentric orange letter C's. Everything about 1800 Clybourn was eye-catching, and Rogers said it was all by design.

"I think Tem was always a fan of cutting-edge architecture, and so he made a point of thinking about who would do the build-out design for the different stores, and there was some really interesting store design going on," Rogers said, "and that was part of the whole attempt to help design play an integral role in the whole development."

Besides the Goose Island Brewery, inaugural tenants at 1800 Clybourn included men's apparel store the Urban American Club, handbag and women's accessory store Spare Parts, children's clothier Micky & Me, housewares purveyor Scoopty-Do's, fitness center Second Wind, and the Chinois gallery and studio, where the Tribune said visitors could "relax with the East's healing arts and tai chi."

This array was soon joined by Muddler's Pool Room, an outpost of the local chain Barbara's Bookstore and an assortment of colorfully named boutiques and jewelry stores — Masque; Delphyne's; Expressions Unlimited; Ancient Echoes, where the prominently displayed fertility amulet was the focal point of a 1991 Tribune story.

On the ground floor, Par Excellence!, later renamed ArtGolf, was an 18-hole indoor miniature golf course designed by contemporary artists with origins at the School of the Art Institute. The author can remember playing a round of miniature golf there with a friend as a youngster, while the grown-ups unwound at A State of the Mind Center, a new-age spa that featured sensory-deprivation flotation tanks.

Metropolis 1800, the banner fine-dining restaurant at 1800 Clybourn, was the creation of Chicago celebrity chef Erwin Dreschler and his wife Cathy. Tribune restaurant critic Phil Vettel gave it a rave review in 1991 for "bright bites on a bistro budget." 

The inaugural entertainment venue at 1800 Clybourn was a venture by Second City cofounder Bernie Sahlins known as the Willow Street Carnival. The avant-garde comedy venue, which a Tribune review said featured "dancing and singing and flute-playing and broom-sweeping; whimsical and satirical musical numbers involving matters from the ozone layer to City Hall," didn't last long.

But in 1990, the Willow Street Carnival space was supplanted by the Remains Theatre — a respected and previously itinerant off-Loop theater company founded in 1979. The Remains Theatre was founded by three actors whom you may recognize: Gary Cole of "Office Space" fame, William Petersen of the "CSI" franchise, and celebrated stage and screen actress Amy Morton. Together with the Steppenwolf Theatre and the since-demolished Royal George Theatre just to the east on Halsted Street, the Remains' location at 1800 Clybourn helped form a new Lincoln Park theater district.

The Remains boasted memorable productions of the classic presidential candidate love-story musical "Of Thee I Sing" staged just in time for the 1992 presidential election, and playwright Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of "The Arabian Nights," which didn't shy away from an extended fart joke. The theater also made headlines for its production of "The Chicago Conspiracy Trial," which dramatized the 1969-70 trial of the "Chicago Seven" protest organizers, who were charged with crossing state lines to incite a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. This was nearly 30 years before the trial got the Hollywood treatment from Aaron Sorkin.

Even the bar at the Remains Theatre and its design and décor, featuring a cactus sculpture and magazine pages lining the floor in a collage, caught enough notice to warrant an article in the Trib.

In addition to all that, 1800 Clybourn held an event known as Good Day Saturday that drew crowds of youngsters.

"There was always some kind of an event going on, you know, petting zoos, or magicians, or performers or musicians," Rogers said. "You know, entertainment with a family appeal that hopes to engage kids."

The Trib reported upon the opening of 1800 Clybourn that there was "nothing like it in metropolitan Chicago." But 1800 Clybourn did sometimes draw comparisons to another Chicago retail and entertainment venue: North Pier in Streeterville, which had opened in a former wholesale exhibition center. North Pier housed the Chicago Children's Museum, the first BattleTech virtual reality arcade, an assortment of restaurants and nightclubs, and a central atrium with a clock on the ceiling featuring a Rube Goldberg contraption that fired off on the hour.

Like 1800 Clybourn, North Pier offered an array of independent local shops in a repurposed historic space. But Horwitz was quick to point out that 1800 Clybourn was "very different" from North Pier, which had a reputation as more of a tourist attraction. Horwitz compared the array of retailers at 1800 Clybourn to the present-day strip of boutiques and shops along Armitage Avenue, a short distance away, but in indoor mall form.

Also like North Pier, 1800 Clybourn had no anchor tenants. However, Horwitz said he did have a couple of anchor tenants in mind — both of which were more than a decade away from even entering the Chicago market when 1800 Clybourn was under development.

"Two of the companies that I pursued at great length. One was REI, which is currently in the neighborhood, and the other was Trader Joe's, also currently in the neighborhood," Horwitz said. "But the core of it was to be smaller retailers for the most part, and mixed with a variety of entertainment."

Rogers said ultimately, the goal was to create an "un-mall" that distinguished itself from suburban-style strip centers.

"There weren't many retail shopping experiences where you could go and hear the Bulgarian Women's Choir over the loudspeakers," he said. "The idea was to have it different and unique."

A venue so unique seems like it would have been a hit, perhaps becoming a defining landmark not only of the burgeoning Clybourn Corridor, but of the Lincoln Park community as a whole.

But it was only five years before 1800 Clybourn was gone.

A festive mall dies as strip malls and big box stores prevail

There are few if any news articles in the archives specifically documenting the revenues and profitability of the 1800 Clybourn mall or its stores and venues. But news reports did say the spaces in the mall never leased up as hoped, and suggested that the mall never developed more than a cult following — the Tribune quoted one devoted fan who admitted to being "smug" that she had "discovered something no one else knew about."

Horwitz blamed the mall's woes on external factors of the economic conditions of the time — including Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which led to an oil price shock that hit the retail sector hard, a collapse in commercial real estate values and a credit crunch amid the 1990-1991 recession. Meanwhile, Horwitz said the lender for the mall fell into insolvency.

"It was one of the tragedies that happened in marketplaces," he said.

The 1800 Clybourn mall ended up in foreclosure, and Bank of America put it up for sale in the spring of 1993, with an asking price of $5 million. By that time, the mall was losing major tenants, with Metropolis 1800 closing in May, and the Urban American Club men's store following in June.

Developer and property manager CRM Properties bought 1800 Clybourn out of foreclosure, and reports began to surface that the firm planned to close the mall and tear down large parts of the structure.

By February 1994, the once-festive mall had turned gloomy and deserted, as documented in the Chicago Reader by Mike Ervin.

Ervin had been working at the Remains Theatre, which had moved out of the building to return to itinerancy before the theater company eventually shut down altogether. He described the mall as a "ghost town," noting that even on Black Friday in 1993, there had seemed to be more employees than shoppers.

"The first reports that [CRM Properties President Charles] Malk planned to buy the place and demolish almost everything appeared in the papers in the summer. But months passed and nothing happened," he wrote. "Some shopkeeps promised to put up a fight. More gave up and moved out. Those of us who stuck it out felt like squatters, vagrants warming ourselves by fires in garbage cans."

Ervin wrote of conflicts between the new owners and the handful of remaining tenants. Muddler's Pool Room reported all its pool tables were taken away under cover of night. Barbara's Bookstore insisted that it was at 1800 Clybourn to stay and hoped to sign another lease when their then-current one expired in 2010, Ervin wrote, but the bookstore was out by May.

The 1800 Clybourn mall closed, and the central structure with its ramps and skywalks and decorative pools was torn down later in 1994. The Goose Island Brewery was left alone and went on with business as usual — even naming one of its beers "Demolition 1800 Ale." A couple of other sections were also retained, including the two masonry towers and, at least for several years, their cuboid beacon assemblies.

The parking lot was moved to the site of the center of the old mall. At what had been the back of the mall, a new edifice was constructed linking together a section of the old structure facing Clybourn with the Goose Island Brewery. Into that new space moved a Bed Bath & Beyond.

Now called Clybourn Place, the tenants in the new development also included an Erehwon Mountain Outfitters store and later a Patagonia, housed in a disjointed remaining structure from the old mall. Max'd Lighting and Interior found a space upstairs from Goose Island, and a GapKids store occupied a new structure on the other side of Willow Street.

The festivity of the site wasn't completely stripped away. Goose Island expanded its space and added a patio, and for some years hosted an August street festival with craft beer, live music, and at least one chili cookoff.

But Horwitz called the new Clybourn Place development "super-ugly." Others were saddened not only about the loss of the mall, but about the trend it represented, in which a festive retail experiment lost out to utilitarian strip malls and big-box stores that had come to dominate the rest of the corridor.

By the time 1800 Clybourn was supplanted by Clybourn Place, Whole Foods had opened its first Chicago location in a vast shopping center at North and Sheffield, which also included a sprawling Best Buy.

A Marshalls and an Omni grocery store had opened in the Riverpoint Center near Fullerton Avenue several years earlier, and strip malls that the Tribune said "look like they could have been dropped in directly from Dempster Street in Skokie or Ogden Avenue in Downers Grove" had come to be a dominant feature of the corridor.

Ron Gordon, who had been a partner in Muddler's Pool Room at 1800 Clybourn, told the Tribune in March 1994 that strip malls and big-box stores were "taking a level of individuality and creativity out of American life." But in the same article, planning and development consultant Nick Trkla called such development "the idiom that America wants."

The evolution of Clybourn Avenue into the 21st century suggests that Trkla was likely right. A trip down Clybourn today will take one past a Costco, a Menards, a strip mall with a Mattress Firm and an urgent care center, and another strip mall just down the street with an Athletico Physical Therapy and a Chipotle. Plenty of historic structures that hearken back to the industrial history of the Clybourn Corridor remain, but there is nothing like 1800 Clybourn to be found anymore.

While 1800 Clybourn only made it five years, Clybourn Place stuck around for decades, staying fairly stagnant even as the streetscape changed around it. Whole Foods moved south of North Avenue. The U.S. Beer Company bar directly across Clybourn Avenue, once a popular gig spot for local rock bands, was supplanted by a Sleep Number mattress store.

A nightlife district came and went on Weed Street, a few blocks to the south. To the east, Halsted Street between Armitage and North avenues — already a popular dining strip as far back as the '80s with the pioneering Southwestern American restaurant Blue Mesa — became an A-list restaurant row with chef Grant Achatz's Alinea and chef Lee Wolen's Boka. 

At Clybourn and Halsted, a gas station with a security glass window was replaced by an Apple Store. A short distance away, the New City YMCA, which sported colorful brick walls in lieu of windows out of fear of flying bullets, was torn down and the NEWCITY retail, entertainment, and residential megacomplex was built on its footprint.

Trader Joe's, the grocery store chain that Horwitz said he wanted for 1800 Clybourn many years before many Chicagoans had likely even heard of it, moved into the former InterCraft building right next to the former mall. It shares the building with a HomeGoods and a storage facility. Meanwhile, REI, the other national store Horwitz said he wanted at 1800 Clybourn, eventually found a spot not far away at Eastman and Kingsbury streets along the North Branch Canal.

The Clybourn Corridor Planned Manufacturing District was eliminated in July 2017 with a zoning change that imposed fewer restrictions, according to Chicago Department of Planning and Development spokesman Peter Strazzabosco. The last two major industrial holdouts, Finkl Steel and General Iron, both moved away in recent years. Manufacturing anywhere on Clybourn Avenue was hard to find by 2026 — the factory for vehicle spotlight maker Unity Manufacturing, close to the old Cabrini-Green area, was the last to stand out.

And down in Streeterville, North Pier, the retail complex that was sometimes compared to 1800 Clybourn despite being much different in many ways, was quick to fade once Navy Pier reopened as Chicago's banner tourist attraction and snatched away the Chicago Children's Museum.

Demolition 1800 version 2.0, and a push for more housing

Thirty-two years after the wrecking ball came for the 1800 Clybourn mall, it was back — poised to level most of what it spared the first time around.

As of Monday, July 20, the structure that housed the Bed Bath & Beyond was gone. So was one of the masonry towers from the old mall and the factory before it, with more demolition to come.

Bed Bath & Beyond had closed all 360 of its stores and gone out of business in 2023. The Bed Bath & Beyond brand was resurrected and adopted months later by Overstock.com, but only as an online retailer.

The original Goose Island brewpub location, having nearly closed in 2008 and again in 2014 amid lease renewal negotiations, had finally called it quits in December 2023. By then, a second Goose Island brewpub on Clark Street in Wrigleyville had come and gone, the Goose Island taproom at 1800 W. Fulton St. had overtaken the Clybourn location in prominence and had begun hosting the Goose Island 312 Block Party, and AB-InBev had purchased the company.

Goose Island moved its Clybourn Avenue brewpub to the new Salt Shed music venue along the Chicago River's North Branch. Meanwhile, Patagonia had also moved from the Clybourn Place development to Fulton Market in 2022.

CRM Properties announced plans to redevelop the 1800 N. Clybourn Ave. site again in May 2024. The new development, to be called the Willow Street District, is set to be composed of five new retail structures — three measuring 8,300 square feet and two measuring 9,500 square feet — with a total of 200 parking spaces on either side of Willow Street.

Renderings for the site showed two masonry towers like the ones from the old mall and factory as part of the development, but one of them being placed south of Willow Street and apart from the former factory and mall footprint. Brian Pelrine, director of zoning and infrastructure for the office of Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), said there had been talk of preserving the towers and/or building a replica, but he was not sure where such discussions landed.

In January, CRM Properties principal Jeff Malk told CoStar that the firm envisions the Willow Street District as "a walkable neighborhood retail district" with local boutiques, "select" national brands, restaurants with outdoor patios, and art and cultural elements. Nothing has come up so far about any specific retailers or other businesses being courted for the development or looking to open there.

Malk and CRM Properties declined to comment for this story.

Initially, plans for the Willow Street District also called for an apartment tower with 500 units, and such plans are still listed on the marketing brochure for the project as a future "Phase II." Pelrine explained by email that a residential element would require a zoning change, while the commercial retail project now set to be constructed does not.

"I would like to reiterate that there would need to be an extensive community feedback process before there would be any consideration of a zoning change to allow for it," Pelrine wrote.

But when it comes to urban planning in 2026, more housing is the main focus.

In May, Alicia Pederson wrote in her Courtyard Urbanist Substack that the Willow Street District plan, and redevelopment efforts on the Clybourn Corridor as a whole, have fallen dramatically short in addressing this need. She called the Willow Street District retail plan "a heartbreaking underuse of land in a neighborhood with extreme demand for family homes."

Pederson wrote that in its transition from industrial uses, the Clybourn Corridor "never became a neighborhood," and is stymied by zoning that still limits residential construction. She also wrote that the earlier plan for a 500-foot residential tower fell short of the kind of livable neighborhood "that everyone wants and no one delivers anymore."

Pederson articulated a vision of "the retail plaza redeveloped not as a tower surrounded by parking lots and commercial buildings. But as five- and six-story buildings lining streets and built to the sidewalk. Ground floors active with small shops, cafés, childcare, groceries, clinics, workshops, co-working spaces, and neighborhood services. Upper floors would hold apartments. Some would be small. Many would be family-sized. Buildings would be shallow enough to allow dual-aspect units: common areas and secondary bedrooms facing street, kitchens and primary bedroom[s] facing inward toward shared courtyards at the heart of every block."

Her Substack post, published in May, called on readers to encourage Ald. Hopkins to advocate for such a vision.

While Pederson broke down the zoning restrictions associated with the issue in detail, Pelrine wrote that some people complaining about the Willow Street District project do not seem to get that an alderman cannot control everything an owner does with his or her property.

"It should also be noted that some criticism of this project for being not dense enough and too auto-centric, mainly from individuals who do not live in the immediate area, fails to understand how zoning works," Pelrine wrote. "This project did not require zoning relief; it is being done entirely by right, so the local alderman does not have the ability to compel a private owner to build something bigger, which is what critics would have liked to see. Zoning lays out maximum use of a property, not minimum."

Pelrine wrote that Ald. Hopkins looks forward to more community conversations about the future of the Clybourn Corridor, and that a more mixed-use future for the corridor may be appropriate with a major need to build more housing in Chicago as a whole.

However, he wrote, "substantial infrastructure investment is needed and has thus far been lacking."

Goltz agreed that more housing development is the future for the Clybourn Corridor, noting that the old Ludlow Typograph building at 2020 N. Clybourn Ave., which had been the headquarters of the nonprofit Anixter Center serving people with disabilities, has been converted into luxury loft housing.

"The one big demand right now is residential housing," Goltz said. "It's certainly not retail."

So could 1800 N. Clybourn Ave. one day be people's home address, whether as a residential tower or in some other form, in addition to the address for a third retail development in the past 40 years? Time will tell.

But a mall like 1800 Clybourn, rebooting an old factory with a fever dream of festive design and bringing together boutique retail, fine dining, and first-rate off-Loop theater under one roof? That is not likely to happen again.

All the stores opened within just the past couple of years. Now they are at risk of closing this coming Saturday if Yellow Banana, the Ohio-based company that owns and operates the stores, does not find a new investor to help keep them open.

At risk are Save A Lot stores at 420 S. Pulaski Rd. in West Garfield Park, 10700 S. Halsted St. in Morgan Park, 2858 E. 83rd St. in South Chicago, 7240 S. Stony Island Ave. in South Shore, 7908 S. Halsted St. in Auburn Gresham, and 4439 W. 63rd St. in West Lawn all of which reopened as Save A Lots in 2024 and 2025 after renovations backed by the city's tax incentives.

In addition, a Save A Lot store at 832 W. 63rd St. in Englewood could close. Many neighbors spent months protesting the opening of that Save A Lot in the former Whole Foods space at 63rd and Halsted streets in 2023.

Neighbors and community leaders in Englewood said at the time that they could not trust the Save A Lot brand — saying the discount grocer has a reputation for selling a lackluster product.

Yellow Banana had been using the Save A Lot brand and supply chain to operate the stores, but the grocery store chain has terminated its operating agreement with Yellow Banana.

In a statement, Save A Lot said the stores owned by Yellow Banana have faced "significant financial headwinds" in part due to "dramatic cuts to SNAP benefits."

"Compared to last year, the stores have experienced a 26% decline in SNAP/EBT tender types. As a result of this and other financial headwinds, Save A Lot made the difficult decision to end our arrangement with Yellow Banana. Yellow Banana is exploring alternatives in order to keep the stores open. If they are unable to find an alternative, the stores will cease operations, effective July 25th," the company said.

The chief executive officer of Yellow Banana, Joseph Canfield, died of a stroke this past April.

While the Save A Lot stores are still operating, Canfield's sudden death sparked a default in Yellow Banana's redevelopment agreement with the City of Chicago, which provided $13.5 million in taxpayer financing in 2022 to renovate and reopen six Save A Lot locations. The default means the city could seek to force Yellow Banana to return that taxpayer funding to the city.

Canfield was billed as the force behind the stores. The Chicago Sun-Times reports the company did not submit a succession plan to the city after Canfield's death as required.

People living and working in the neighborhoods where the stores are located said they're already living in food deserts, and for many of them Save A Lot is the only location they an walk to, and the closest they can drive to for groceries.

"It's going to make an impact to the community; a real big impact," Carolyn Milon said.

Many of the shelves inside some Save A Lot stores in Chicago were empty on Wednesday, and remaining items like produce, dairy, baked goods and meat, were being sold at 50% off.

Milon and her husband, Brandell Kemp, were stocking up for their family at the Englewood store, where they spent $270 on 12 bags of groceries.

While the discount is welcome for the couple and their five children, Milon said the possibility of the store closing by Saturday will have an impact on those who rely on it for affordable groceries each week.

"I hate it's closing, because now we don't have a grocery store to go to. So now we have to travel even farther, and this was very convenient for us and for the seniors around here, because we didn't have to go that far," she said.

Lolita Butts works in Englewood, and has shopped at the neighborhood's Save A Lot since it opened.

"It's an affordable option," she said. "My hope is that someone will take it over, keep the prices where people can afford it, so this community can thrive and survive."

Peter Strazzabosco, Deputy Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development, said efforts are still underway to prevent the closures. At the same time, the city is exploring options to recover the $13.5 million in taxpayer funds used to renovate many of the stores.

"The City's priority is for the stores to remain open with a current or new operator. If they go dark, the goal is for each building to expediently re-open with a full-service grocer," Strazzabosco said. "Yellow Banana, Save A Lot, DPD and other financial partners are discussing opportunities to keep the stores open with potential investors or new suppliers. These are all turnkey locations ready for continued occupancy."

If the stores do close, Strazzabosco said each of the six locations renovated with taxpayer funding must be taken over within 12 months to avoid defaulting on their agreement with the city. While the seventh location in Englewood did not receive taxpayer funding, the property was part of a land sale agreement when it was first built as a Whole Foods, and if a new grocer isn't brought in to take over that site within 18 months, that property also would risk defaulting on its agreement with the city.

Illinois American Water, the state's largest private water utility, is seeking a $142 million rate increase, which would raise typical water costs for its 357,000 residential customers by around $14 per month. Typical wastewater customers would see an additional increase of around $28 per month.

Aqua Illinois, the second-largest private water utility serving over 90,000 customers in the state, has asked regulators to approve a $26.5 million rate increase, which would raise average combined water treatment and supply bills by about $23 per month.

But as the Illinois Commerce Commission weighs those rate cases, it is also evaluating a proposed merger between the two water utilities' parent companies. The Citizens Utility Board, a watchdog group, is calling on the ICC to reject the merger.

The consumer advocate group warns that approval of the merger between Illinois American's parent company, American Water, and Aqua's parent company, Essential Utilities, would allow unprecedented market consolidation.

"Illinois American and Aqua have a long history of consumer complaints about escalating bills and poor service, and our expert testimony shows that there is no reason to believe that the merger will fix these problems," CUB Executive Director Sarah Moskowitz said in a statement. "That's why we urge the ICC to reject this deal or set strong guardrails to hold these companies accountable to their long-suffering customers."

After Illinois American purchased Prairie Path Water Company last month, which formerly provided water to customers in 15 counties in north and central Illinois, CUB estimates that approving the merger of Illinois American and Aqua Illinois' parent companies would mean that over 99.99% of regulated water and wastewater utility customers in the state would be served by American Water and its affiliates.

"The fact that Illinois' two biggest private water companies are seeking higher rates in 2026, as one parent company tries to purchase another, just proves CUB's point that the companies are more interested in seeking higher profits than actually serving the public good," Moskowitz said.

If approved by regulators, the merger would be expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, according to a joint news release from the companies.

Both water utilities say the rate increases are necessary to pay for critical infrastructure upgrades and upkeep of aging water pipelines, storage tanks and equipment.

If approved in full by the ICC, Aqua Illinois customers can expect to see a rate increase take effect in late April 2027. The increase would be roughly 15% for average residential customers who pay for wastewater collection and treatment in addition to their water bills, bringing monthly bills to around $178, and nearly 30% for residential customers who do not pay for wastewater treatment, bringing their bills to around $102 per month, according to the company's public notice.

The company said the request also reflects its need to replace lead service lines and defend against cybersecurity threats.

CUB objected to Aqua Illinois' filing, saying it was driven more by shareholder interests and the company's "outrageous" request to increase its shareholder return on equity from 9.6% to 10.8%, which CUB said would make it the highest of the state's major utilities.

Rebecca Losli, president of Illinois American, said the company's $142 million request was driven by approximately $577 million needed to "modernize and strengthen" its water and wastewater systems in 2026 and 2027.

"These investments directly benefit the communities we proudly serve and provide our customers with even more reliable service and improved water quality — from treatment to the tap," Losli said. "It underscores our employees' commitment to the health and safety of our customers and the communities we serve."

Like with Aqua Illinois, CUB called out Illinois American's request to bump its shareholder return on equity from 9.84% to 10.75%.

The watchdog urged customers of Illinois American to attend or submit comments ahead of a public ICC forum in Bolingbrook on July 14. Customers can submit comments online or by calling the ICC's Consumer Services Division at 1-800-524-0795 on weekdays between 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

A forum has not been publicly scheduled regarding the Aqua Illinois rate case as it is in an earlier stage, but impacted customers are still able to submit comments on the ICC website.

Gov. JB Pritzker recently signed legislation that requires the ICC to offer public forums for customer feedback on future rate cases, although the bill does not take effect until Jan. 1.

The ICC is expected to rule on the proposed merger in November, on the Illinois American rate case in December and on the Aqua Illinois rate case in May 2027.

If approved, Illinois American's rate increase would take effect in January 2027 and Aqua Illinois' in late April 2027.

This story was originally published by Capitol News Illinois and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

The Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from several states secured a right-to-repair settlement Wednesday with agriculture equipment giant Deere & Co. — commonly known as John Deere — that requires the company to let farmers and independent shops fix their own equipment.

The Illinois-based manufacturer has faced complaints for years for withholding the software needed for repairs and forcing customers to use authorized dealers instead of independent ones.

This marks the second right-to-repair settlement Deere has reached this year, following a separate $99 million class-action settlement with farmers in April. Though the class-action compensated consumers, the FTC's settlement instead requires Deere to make its repair services available to equipment owners and independent shops.

The FTC and attorneys general from Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin brought the antitrust lawsuit in January 2025, arguing that Deere had illegally restricted farmers and independent shops that might otherwise service them from repairing farm equipment such as tractors. Deere also makes engines and equipment for forestry, landscaping and construction.

Under the order filed in Illinois, Deere will now be required to make diagnostic and repair tools available to equipment owners and independent repair shops, not only its own network of authorized dealers. It also prevents Deere dealers from retaliating against equipment owners or repair shops who choose to fix their own equipment instead of paying for Deere's services. The order is headed to Judge Iain D. Johnston for his approval.

"For too long, Arizona farmers and independent mechanics have been at the mercy of Deere's monopoly over repair tools, forced to wait — and pay — for authorized dealers just to fix broken tractors and other equipment," Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement Wednesday.

Deere must pay $1 million collectively to the five states for antitrust enforcement costs and will be subject to strict compliance oversight for the next 10 years.

In the complaint, the FTC argued that Deere provides a service software tool to authorized dealers but does not provide the full version to equipment owners or independent shops. Deere had said the lawsuit was baseless, denied that its distribution of service tools was anticompetitive and argued that it could not monopolize services since it does not directly provide them.

Deere maintained its commitment to independent repair in a statement Wednesday, adding that the agreement with the FTC reinforces its innovation of more flexible repair options.

"This is good news for our customers and for the future of how Deere equipment is supported," said Denver Caldwell, vice president of aftermarket and customer support.

Right-to-repair has become an increasingly common issue over the years, especially for tech products, with consumers complaining that even simple repairs can only be done by company-authorized dealers.

Chicago Soul Café opened Monday at 6248 S. St. Lawrence Ave., right off 63rd Street and about halfway between the King Drive and Cottage Grove Avenue Chicago Transit Authority Green Line stops.

The café serves fresh food and signature coffee, and favorites like barbecue potato chips with hot sauce and pickles with peppermint sticks in the middle, but its mission goes well beyond that. The café also offers job training for people impacted by the criminal justice system.The café is part of Bridge to Freedom, an organization that helps people reentering the community after being incarcerated.

"We have vocational training, paid programs for men and women who come home from prison, and then Chicago Soul is part of the workforce development," said Dr. Mica Battle of Bridge to Freedom and the Chicago Soul Café. "This is where they will be working and learning culinary."

The café is decorated with historic murals and other memorabilia. For the first month, the café will be open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., and after that, hours will expand.

The Northwest Indiana Times reported that soil drilling equipment was spotted near the site, located west of the Indiana Toll Road (Interstate 90) in Hammond.

Logistics and storage facilities are currently located on the site, the paper reported.

"This activity is part of the normal site evaluation process as we continue to advance our stadium development project in Hammond," the Bears said in a statement issued to CBS News Chicago. "We have an excellent option already in place and continue to assess additional parcels of land in the Wolf Lake region to ensure we place the stadium and mixed-use district in the very best location to serve all of Chicagoland."

Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. is staying tight-lipped on the search, but said he is confident the Bears are heading to Indiana.

Earlier this month, the team announced the plan to build a new stadium complex in Hammond.

A bill passed by Indiana lawmakers calls for $1 billion in taxpayer money to be put toward infrastructure around the stadium, which officials said would support plans for retail, restaurants and residential units to be built around the stadium complex.

The Bears say they are also continuing negotiations with Illinois lawmakers.

At a committee hearing, Bally's senior vice president reminded aldermen that a 2022 agreement struck by the Lightfoot administration gave the company a monopoly on virtual slot machines within Chicago city limits. Legalizing video gambling terminals, known as VGTs, outside Bally's property would render that contract null and void, the company said.

The City Council approved legalizing VGTs as part of its late 2025 budget.

If the contract is voided, Bally's said it would halt its annual $4 million licensing payments to the city and would no longer honor its commitments to diversity and union hiring.

As an apparent olive branch, the company offered to immediately set up slot machine lounges at O'Hare and Midway airports. Bally's said that move would effectively replace the $6.8 million in revenue the city was counting on from legalizing VGTs in the 2025 budget.

Bally's is currently operating out of a temporary location in River West. The company's permanent casino is still roughly a year away from opening.

Today, it remains a destination for generations of community members.

Daley's, at 6257 S. Cottage Grove Ave., is located about a little over a mile west of the Obama Presidential Center — and right at the terminal of the Chicago Transit Authority Green Line, which runs overhead.

Irish ironworker John Daley — who was part of a different Daley family from the one that includes Mayors Richard J. and Richard M. Daley, U.S. Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, and Cook County Commissioner John Daley — opened Daley's Lunch Room in 1892. This was a year before the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 took over Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance nearby.

When Daley's opened, the elevated train line now known as the Green Line was under construction, and the entrepreneurial ironworker saw a need for a food facility.

Daley's was a success, and in 1918, original owner Daley sold the restaurant to a pair of Greek immigrants who worked in his restaurant — waiter Tom Kyros and cook Paul Emmanuel. Kyros was a waiter at Daley's at the time, Emmanuel a cook.

Since then, the only setback was during the Great Depression, when Kyros and Emmanuel decided to have a new building constructed only for the bank financing the construction to fail. The men had to go work in other foodservice jobs, but by 1937, they had acquired the funds to rebuild Daley's.

Daley's been a community staple ever since, and remains in Kyros' family. Tom Kyros was the great-great uncle of current Daley's owner Mike Zar.

"It was just booming around here — jazz clubs, nightlife, restaurants, bars," said Zar. "Muhammad Ali used to train down the street at Johnny Coulon's gym at 63rd and University."

Woodlawn later fell on hard times, with disinvestment and population loss. Nevertheless, Daley's' soldiered on, and remains a beloved community destination.

"We've got good service and a fair price," Zar said. "A lot of places don't have service. You walk up to a counter, you order, you sit down, someone brings you your food — the last you ever see of them."

In 2019, Daley's moved into its current building — a new building in a community where new buildings weren't being constructed very often until recently.

Daley's is open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week. The restaurant serves dinner as early as 10 a.m., with workers like overnight staffers at the nearby University of Chicago Medical Center in mind, Zar said.

The restaurant is known for its dinners with baked chicken, mac and cheese, and collard greens, as well as for offering four different steaks. The biscuits served at Daley's are made with a recipe that dates back 40 years.

"I guess people just gravitate towards this restaurant. It's a family-oriented atmosphere. You know, we're perfect for Sunday lunch and dinner after church," Zar said. "We're basically like that get-it-done diner, you know, fair prices, good service."

But there is growing concern about where families will get their medications.

In May, a Walgreens spokesperson told CBS News Chicago the store at 8628 S. Cottage Grove Ave. has experienced "significantly higher levels of theft and violent incidents than our other locations."

The spokesperson said the drug store giant has made adjustments to the operations at the store and taken other steps to mitigate the issue, but "ongoing safety challenges" made it hard to keep staff and customers safe, and so Walgreens has chosen to close the store.  

"Safety must remain our top priority," Walgreens said.

But a resident visiting the store for the last time on Thursday said, "I understand about theft and all of that, but it's always something being taken away." 

Neighbors in Chatham said the closure will leave a gap in access to medicine, vitamins, and basic necessities such as a gallon of milk or toiletries in the neighborhood.

"It disrupts the medical treatment plans for the life sustaining needs of the families in the community," a neighbor said.

Ald. William Hall (6th) said closures like the one affecting the Chatham Walgreens are creating pharmacy deserts in Chicago. The nearest Walgreens to the one closing in Chatham is more than a mile away, at 87th Street and Stony Island Avenue.  

Ald. Hall was among several elected officials who gathered outside the Walgreens Thursday morning. He is pushing for the city to take ownership of this issue through a new "office of pharmacy access," which will secure space for pharmacists and cover their overhead costs in neighborhoods that require access to medicine.

Hall wants to create 77 access points for people to receive medications and supplements in the next seven years. The alderman said he is starting a pilot program in July at 79th Street and Rhodes Avenue.

The alderman said he was meeting with Mayor Brandon Johnson to talk about funding the office of pharmacy access initiative on Thursday afternoon. One idea for doing so was to tax liquor sales between midnight and 6 a.m.

"We can become the landlord. We can give small pharmacists the opportunity to not deal with the overhead that sometimes costs them business," Hall said. 

Last year, Walgreens announced it was closing five Chicago locations, including a significant store in the Bronzeville neighborhood at 35th Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Walgreens also abandoned stores at 71st Street and Jeffery Boulevard in South Shore, and 79th Street and Jeffery Boulevard in South Chicago.

Neighbors express concern over medication access

In May, Darryl Smith told CBS News that his 76-year-old mother relies on medication from Walgreens after having a lung transplant. She takes 54 pills a day, and during his lunch break, he goes to the Walgreens in Chatham to pick up her medication.  

 "They don't care about the well-being. It's not their family that's on these meds," he said. "If they close this Walgreens, the next one is not within a distance for me to do on my lunch break. So it's a real inconvenience."

Other neighbors have called the store a "vital resource" to the community. 

The lawsuit says SSP America used the restaurant's reputation to secure a contract for itself at the airport, and then damaged Gene & Georgetti's brand.

"This is actually about breach of contract at this point," Gene & Georgetti owner Michelle Durpetti said on CBS News Chicago on Wednesday morning. "We tried a lot of diplomatic channels and to have conversations for months."

The partnership goes back to 2019, when SSP America was looking to secure a restaurant concession at Midway, the lawsuit said.

"Defendant knew that partnering with Gene & Georgetti would greatly increase its chances of winning the restaurant concession at Midway Airport, as Gene & Georgetti is a woman-owned, woman-managed, and famous local restaurant in Chicago," the lawsuit said.

Gene & Georgetti agreed to partner with SSP America, and owner Michelle Durpetti set up G&G Midway to facilitate the partnership, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit said SSP America repeatedly told Gene & Georgetti that the concessions operator hoped to form a longstanding relationship lasting years, or even decades, with the restaurant.

The agreement required SSP America to pay a $50,000 upfront fee to Gene & Georgetti in exchange for using proprietary material such as trademarks and trade secrets, and the Gene & Georgetti's good name, the lawsuit said. SSP was also required to pay licensing fees of 5% of net revenues generated at Gene's Bistro, the lawsuit said.

Gene's Bistro opened in 2020 at Midway as part of a 20-year deal.

"From day one, Gene's Bistro was an instant attraction in Midway as travelers recognizing the brand name Gene & Georgetti were eager to dine at Gene's Bistro," the lawsuit said.

But soon after SSP America had "secured the menus, brand name, and expertise" from Gene & Georgetti, the relationship between the concession operator and the restaurant changed, the lawsuit said. Specifically, SSP said it was struggling financially due to the COVID-19 pandemic and could not pay its fees to Gene & Georgetti that were required under the agreement, the lawsuit said.

"For us, the relationship was great and very reciprocal during the bidding process, but the minute it got awarded is really when it changed," Durpetti said.

Gene & Georgetti agreed to a request by SSP to waive both the licensing fees and the upfront fee for more than a year — allowing the concession operator to use Gene & Georgetti's name recognition, licenses, and expertise for free, the lawsuit said.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit said SSP America deviated from the core menu the parties had agreed upon, and began using recipes and serving dishes of lower quality at Gene's Bistro. When Gene & Georgetti complained about this, the restaurant was "met with [SSP America's] resistance, and even threats of terminating the partnership," the lawsuit said.

Then, SSP America decided to terminate its partnership with Gene & Georgetti, the lawsuit said. On Oct. 21 of last year, SSP America sent a letter to Gene & Georgetti announcing that it was "unilaterally" terminating the partnership and that Gene's Bistro would go out of business within 90 days, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit said SSP America did not give any reason for this, but claimed that SSP America was in negotiations with Bally's Chicago for a space for slot machines at Midway, and was planning to turn Gene's Bistro into a sports-themed bar that would eventually include slot machines, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also said Gene's Bistro has received bad reviews, with people commenting in Google reviews, "This place is a joke," "I've never been verbally berated by a server quite like today," and "Got severe food poisoning from here."

Durpetti said powerful companies like SSP America take advantage of the good names of small restaurants like Gene & Georgetti to get their foot in the door for airport concessions.

"I think it's very much a David and Goliath story. We are an independent restaurant. We are the kind of business that concessionaires look for as an anchor brand to win this kind of business. And so what ends up happening is they combine us with like commercial brands that you'll see in an airport, right? But we're the ones that help them win in all of these cities," she said. "This is a publicly traded global brand, and they've decided to just marginalize us in this process and not speak to us, not answer, not be held accountable for anything—and to me, that's wrong."

Crain's Chicago Business reported that SSP America said in a statement that the lawsuit is "without merit," and that it remains committed to partnering with local brands and making the right business decisions. CBS News Chicago has yet to speak directly with SSP.

"I find it so interesting that they used the word 'merit,' and that it doesn't have merit, because their behaviors had no merit for the last five years," Durpetti said in response.

Gene's Bistro currently remains open.

The Boston-based sports gambling company said it had decided to discontinue sportsbook operations at DraftKings Sportsbook, at the northwest corner of Addison Street and Sheffield Avenue adjacent to the historic ballpark, following a review of its retail presence in Illinois.

DraftKings Sportsbook will remain open as a restaurant, bar, and sports entertainment venue, but will no longer offer in-person sports betting.

"While we are proud of what we have built alongside the Chicago Cubs, we are taking a more focused approach to where we invest in the state," DraftKings said. "The cost of operating in Illinois, including its high tax structure, makes it more difficult to justify continued investment in a standalone retail sportsbook. We remain committed to serving our mobile sportsbook customers."

Sportsbook operators pay between 20% and 40% in state taxes. Since July of last year, Illinois sportsbooks have also paid $0.25 on the first 20 million online bets statewide annually, and then $0.50 on every bet after that.

DraftKings and rival FanDuel instituted a 50 cent fee on every wager placed in Illinois as a result.

Sports gambling companies also fought to late last year to block new taxes and licensing requirements on the Chicago city level. The companies dropped an effort to block the laws immediately, but went ahead with a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the city's sports betting tax and licensing requirements.

The 2026 budget plan approved by the City Council last December imposed a 10.25% tax on the adjusted gross receipts from all sports bets placed within the city.

The DraftKings Sportsbook space opened in June 2023. The sports betting operation within opened in March 2024.

The same corner of the ballpark land was once home to the smaller Captain Morgan Club — which opened in 2009 and was torn down in 2018.

A sign in the window at the Ann Sather flagship, at 909 W. Belmont Ave., will be closing June 28. The building is to be torn down for a new apartment development.

A new location will open in July at 1819 W. Division St. in the West Town community — an area where Ann Sather has had a presence in the past.

The Division Street site formerly housed a location of the breakfast restaurant chain Yolk.

"We're delighted to return to the West Town area, where we previously operated a Milwaukee Avenue location from 2001 to 2007," Ann Sather owner and former Chicago Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) said in a news release. "We closed the Wicker Park location only because adjacent construction caused structural issues in our building. Our new Division Street restaurant is an ideal location for Ann Sather as many of our customers live in the area."

Next door to Ann Sather, a new mixed-use building is now under construction. The building, which will feature 46 luxury apartments, replaced a two-story brown brick building nearly architecturally identical to the one that houses Ann Sather.

The building that was torn down housed the American Vapor vape shop, Strings Ramen, BopNgrill Korean fast-food restaurant, The Gallery Bookstore, and Belmont Army Vintage, along with apartments above.

The original plans for the 919 W. Belmont Ave. building now under construction also called for the demolition of the building that houses Ann Sather. But the plan was scaled back, and the Belmont Avenue Ann Sather has remained in business with the new building being built next door.

However, the building that now houses Ann Sather is still being torn down after all. A Crain's Chicago Business report in April noted that Mavrek Development is planning another 46-unit building on the site as a second phase of the new apartment project, called the Belmora.

The phase of the Belmora now under construction is expected to open for residents in the fall of this year, Crain's reported. Developers hope to complete the second building in the fall of next year, with demolition of the Ann Sather building to begin in the summer.

The Ann Sather restaurant flagship has been located on the south side of Belmont Avenue between the Chicago Transit Authority 'L' tracks and Clark Street since Ann Sather herself first took over an eatery on the block in 1945, but has moved several times. 

The restaurant moved to its current location at 909 W. Belmont Ave. in 2007. Most recently before that, it had been located at 929 W. Belmont Ave., the current home of Reckless Records and the Clarity Clinic.

While an Ann Sather on Belmont Avenue in Lakeview will soon be but a memory, the restaurant will still maintain one location in the community, about five blocks away at 3415 N. Broadway. This location has been in business for decades.

An Ann Sather location also remains in business at 1147 W. Granville Ave. in Edgewater.

Other locations have also come and gone over the years — including the one at 1448 N. Milwaukee Ave. in the Wicker Park neighborhood that Tunney mentioned in the news release. The building that housed the Wicker Park restaurant was severely damaged in a construction mishap and had to be torn down.

Another Ann Sather location opened in 1987 at 5207 N. Clark St in Andersonville, and was originally owned and operated by Tunney's sister, Debbie. The Andersonville Ann Sather closed in 2013, and the space is now occupied by a Raygun apparel and design store.

Tunney's brother, Ed, opened a third Ann Sather location at 1329 E. 57th St. in the Hyde Park neighborhood in 1989, but that location closed five years later.

Ann Sather locations have also come and gone at 3416 N. Southport Ave. in Lakeview, and 2665 N. Clark St. in Lincoln Park.

The restaurant chain is known for its cinnamon rolls, potato sausage and Swedish pancakes, among other specialties.

The New Town Alano Club, a recovery organization, was located upstairs in the Belmont Avenue Ann Sather building for many years, but has moved to 3326 N. Ashland Ave.

The five-year agreement, ratified on Tuesday, covers nearly 30,000 flight attendants at United. It includes an average 31% pay increase this summer, boarding pay worth an additional 7% to 8% in compensation on average and $741 million in retroactive pay, according to the Association of Flight Attendants.

"The contract will immediately change the lives of United Flight Attendants, especially our thousands of new hires who have been hired since the pandemic," said Ken Diaz, president of the union's United chapter. "Our solidarity delivered the goods."

The union said the deal also secures expanded job security, restrictions on red-eye flying, pay for lengthy delays over 2 1/2 hours, higher retirement contributions, 10 weeks paid parental leave and the elimination of 24-hour on-call reserve schedules.

Both United CEO Scott Kirby and union leaders say the agreement — reached through mediation at the National Mediation Board — sets a new benchmark in the industry.

"The United Airlines Flight Attendant contract now leads the industry in total value for Flight Attendants — and it should," said Sara Nelson, president of the AFA, which represents more than 55,000 flight attendants across 20 airlines.

In a post shared on LinkedIn, Kirby said United is "lucky to have the best flight attendants in the world to represent our airline!"

"I am very happy that they now have the industry-leading contract that they deserve," he said.

For years, it had been standard across much of the airline industry for flight attendants to go unpaid during boarding, despite flight attendants already assisting passengers, resolving seating and carry-on issues, conducting safety checks and preparing the cabin for departure.

Delta Air Lines became the first U.S. airline to offer boarding pay in 2022, followed by American Airlines and Alaska Airlines.

Last August, Air Canada's flight attendants put a public spotlight on the issue when about 10,000 of them walked off the job, leading the Canadian airline to cancel more than 3,100 flights. The strike ended days later with a breakthrough deal that included pay for boarding passengers.

It will be the Chicago-based fast food giant's first-ever naming-rights partnership.

The team said McDonald's will play an active role in shaping the fan experience at the new stadium, including the design of a McDonald's flagship restaurant and the involvement of the McDonald's brand in other fan experiences.

The $750 million privately funded stadium is being built on a plot of land called The 78, a long-undeveloped 62-acre parcel of land near Roosevelt Road and Clark Street along the South Branch of the Chicago River.

The land has been dubbed "The 78" for its potential to become the city's 78th official community area.

McDonald's Park is set to open in 2028. A groundbreaking ceremony for the stadium was held in March.

Plans for a new residential high-rise on the site were announced in December. Specific details were revealed last week.

The office of Ald. Bennett Lawson (44th) said the proposed 24-story building at 2800 N. Sheridan Rd., at the northwest corner of the intersection with Diversey Parkway, would house 303 residential units. It would also include about 10,500 square feet of retail space, 150 parking spaces, and 414 bike parking spaces, according to Lawson's office.

A total of 60 units, or 20%, would be designated as affordable housing.

The building would measure 281 feet. As described by Urbanize Chicago, the building would feature three staggered volumes of residential space rising into the air, and beneath them, a masonry "podium" featuring ground-level retail.

The project would also build over a parking lot on Sheridan Road that used to serve the medical building, but is now out of use and closed off.

The new building would be made of bird-friendly glass, according to Lawson's office.

Architectural firm Antunovich Associates, developer Continuum Capital, and Chicago Development Partners are seeking a zoning change so the project can go ahead, according to Lawson's office.

The building now standing at 2800 N. Sheridan Rd. has been home for many years to the Ida and Norman H. Stone Medical Center, housing doctors' offices and other medical facilities. Many of the offices have been associated with nearby Ascension St. Joseph Hospital.

The building is fronted by an atrium that greets those headed to doctor's appointments with lush greenery and curving ramps as they head to the elevator.

Many medical offices that were housed in the building have since relocated to the nine-story Ascension St. Joseph outpatient building at 2845 N. Sheridan Rd. about a block away. Some offices remain open and active in the Stone Medical Center building, but a spokesperson for developers said it is expected to be vacated by the end of the month.

As recounted by the blog Connecting the Windy City, what became the Stone Medical Center building opened in 1951 as the headquarters for the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America.

The Amalgamated Meat Cutters merged with the Retail Clerks International Union to form the United Food and Commercial Workers in 1979. Chicago Public Art reported that the union headquarters moved to Washington, D.C., that year, and the building was sold to St. Joseph Hospital.

The building in turn stands on the onetime location of a mansion that reports said dated back to the late 19th century. It had been home to banker and real estate operator Rudolph Schloesser, and was later a restaurant called Maisonette Russe—featuring Russian food specialties by former Russian White Army Col. Vladimir Yaschenko, according to a 1931 Chicago dining booklet.

The mansion was last used as the Chicago campaign headquarters for presidential candidate Charles H. Dewey before being cleared to make way for the Amalgamated Meat Cutters/Stone Medical Center building, according to the Connecting the Windy City blog.

By the time it was torn down for the Amalgamated Meat Cutters/Stone Medical Center building, the old mansion was described in published reports as "ramshackle," according to Connecting the Windy City.

Developers bought the Stone Medical Center building from Ascension Health for $17.25 million late last year, according to CoStar.

The Stone Medical Center building is also home to a pair of sculptures called the Brotherhood Monument, which date back to the meat cutters' union days. Sculptor Egon Weiner created two identical bronze statues for the building — one facing Diversey Parkway, the other Sheridan Road.

The Brotherhood Monument sculptures each depict four kneeling figures, two men and two women, in a circle with their hands on each other's shoulders. The figures represent the peoples of Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, the Chicago Public Art guide reported.

Developers said the Brotherhood Monument will be saved.

"While our design is still being finalized, the sculptures will be preserved and remain accessible to the public," said a spokesperson for Continuum Development.

When asked if developers planned to include the Brotherhood Monument sculptures in the design of the new building or move them elsewhere, the spokesperson said the location is still being determined.

At the dawn of 2025, "Blue Man Group" said goodbye to the Briar Street Theatre in East Lakeview after nearly 30 years. It was to the point where many had never known Briar Street, at 3133 N. Halsted St., as anything other than the venue for "Blue Man Group." But between 1985 and 1997, before that acclaimed production took over, productions there included "Driving Miss Daisy" before the stage show was adapted for the big screen, and Neil Simon's "Laughter on the 23rd Floor," among many others.

But there was no going back after Blue Man Group left. The former Marshall Field's delivery horse carriage house that housed the Briar Street Theatre isn't being torn down, but plans unveiled in May will see it turned into a mixed-use development with housing units in a new addition on top, joined by a new building on the footprint of the parking lot.

Meanwhile, a little over half a mile away on Belmont Avenue, the Theatre Building with its three separate stages first opened in 1977, serving as an incubator for small theater companies while also staging its own new musicals. The Chicago Reader reported that as of 2009, the Theatre Building, 1225 W. Belmont Ave., had staged more than 800 plays and 500 theater companies.

The Theatre Building hosted the first show staged within the Chicago city limits by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company — "Say Goodnight, Gracie," with John Malkovich — in 1979. David Schwimmer took the stage there for Lookingglass Theatre Company. Chicago favorites, such as "Hellcab," took up residence at the Theatre Building, and it hosted the Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival.

Today? The Theatre Building, which changed names to Stage 773 upon being bought out in 2010 and turned into a bar and art space in 2022, is slated to be torn down for a housing development after closing altogether.

A couple of miles to the south, the Royal George Theatre, at 1641 N. Halsted St. and right across the street from the venerable Steppenwolf Theatre, opened in 1984 with four stages ranging in size from a 452-seat main stage to an intimate 50-seat space. The Royal George hosted some of Chicago's most beloved shows: the long-running cabaret show "Forever Plaid," the one-woman religious comedy "Late Nite Catechism," and Hershey Felder's depictions of great composers.

Today? The wrecking ball has arrived. The Royal George shut down like most everything else upon the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, and never reopened. In the fall, the former Balena restaurant space next door was first to come down, and the Royal George itself is expected to follow soon. A nine-story apartment building with retail on the ground floor will be built on its footprint.

The losses affecting the Chicago theater scene are not only a matter of spaces closing and being repurposed or torn down.

This past April, the lights were on again at the Victory Gardens Theater — around since 1974 and located in the historic Biograph Theatre building in Lincoln Park since 2006 — for David Mamet's "Henry Johnson," by Relentless Theatre Group. Victory Gardens also touts plans for a "vibrant 2026 season" and an "exciting new chapter of productions and partnerships" on its website, and is hosting a writers' workshop with award-winning playwright Yolanda Nieves in November and December.

But the historic venue has otherwise been largely dark in the wake of a series of controversies, resignations, and dismissals between 2020 and 2022, after which Victory Gardens stopped producing its own shows.

Meanwhile, despite announcing that it was closing permanently at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2020, the Mercury Theater, at 3745 N. Southport Ave. in Lakeview, reopened the following year under new leadership and went on to thrive again. The Mercury saw its production of "Jersey Boys" win a prestigious Jeff Award in 2024.

But nothing has been happening at the Mercury for about a year now. A message left on the Mercury Theater voicemail inquiring about plans for the future was not immediately returned.

The state of Chicago theater — sounding alarms

What does all this say about the state of theater in Chicago? Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones, who also used to review stage productions for CBS News Chicago, sounded the alarm on a number of crises in an August 2023 column.

In addition to venues closing and going dormant, Jones pointed out in the column that the heavy-hitters of nonprofit theater in Chicago — including the Steppenwolf and the Chicago Shakespeare — had seen their leadership change over since 2019. He also identified 34 theater companies that had gone out of business between 2019 and 2023 in what he called "not even a complete list," and noted that the number of shows and the length of those shows' runs was falling at even the big-name nonprofit theaters.

Jones attributed the issues to several specific factors. These included an audience that failed to return to nonprofit stage venues after the COVID pandemic receded, despite other entertainment such as concerts coming roaring back. Other culprits: competition from big tech, a business model rooted in subscription seasons that Jones called "outdated," internal squabbles going public, and critics, who took aim at the compensation for artistic directors while accusing those directors' companies of staging "tired revivals," though Jones wrote that those were actually rarer than new works.

Jones also pointed out that some of Chicago's largest and most established nonprofit theaters had opened new buildings over the prior several years — a $28 million new venue for the Writers Theatre in Glencoe designed by celebrity architect Jeanne Gang in 2016, the $35 million Yard space at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier in 2017, and most recently the $54 million Liz & Eric Lefkofsky Art & Education Center with its theater-in-the-round at the Steppenwolf, which was unveiled in 2021.

Soon to join these venues is a $32 million new home for the 51-year-old Northlight Theatre in Evanston, which broke ground in March. A $46 million new home is also in the works in Uptown for the TimeLine Theatre Company, which for several years has made its home in a space in a church building in East Lakeview.

But while new buildings may seem like signs of hope, Jones also noted a disconnect between the priorities of the theater companies that commission the pricey structures and the actors and other artists who take the stages in those buildings. He noted that the combined $117 million that went into the new Writers Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare, and Steppenwolf buildings could have gone to artists' salaries, while conceding that this is "not how the real world works."

Furthermore, Jones wrote, theater artists work on a freelance basis and don't feel a great deal of loyalty to the theater institutions that employ them.

A changing theater marketplace in Chicago

While those in the know agree that theater in Chicago and well beyond is in a state of transition, if nothing else, the trend of venues vanishing isn't new. Playwright Vicki Quade, the owner of Nuns4Fun Entertainment, created the aforementioned "Late Nite Catechism" in 1993 with Maripat Donovan, who played the starring nun.

Quade noted that all the theater venues that hosted "Late Nite Catechism" from 1993 until the start of the COVID pandemic are gone. The show started at the Live Bait Theatre, 3914 N. Clark St., whose namesake company closed many years ago; the retro entertainment venue Stars & Garters recently took over the space. Among past homes for "Late Nite Catechism," the Clark Street space is almost unique inasmuch as the venue — albeit in different hands — actually still exists.

"We went to the Organic. That's gone. We were at Zebra Crossing. That's gone. The Ivanhoe was four years. That's a liquor store," said Quade. "We went to Royal George. We were there for 20 years, and that was sold. You know, the joke in our family is, my son called me after it was announced the Royal George was being sold, and he said, 'Well Mom, it took you 20 years, but you closed another theater.'"

At one time, numerous Chicago neighborhoods — particularly those along the north lakefront — had not only a variety of live theater venues, but entire theater districts unto themselves. For instance, back in the 1990s, when storefront theater in Chicago was still a thriving enterprise, the mighty Steppenwolf and its across-the-street neighbor the Royal George were joined by the Remains Theatre, of which Gary Cole of "Office Space" fame and William Petersen of "CSI" were founding ensemble members, two blocks away in a space in the long-gone 1800 Clybourn mall.

Meanwhile, in Uptown, the National Pastime Theater and the Red Bones Theatre were once found in separate storefronts in the same building on, appropriately, Broadway. Both spaces were later taken over by the Profiles Theatre, which shuttered amid a sexual harassment scandal. Later still, the two spaces became the home of PrideArts Chicago, which has since moved to the Center on Halsted.

A short distance to the south, along and off Broadway between Irving Park Road and Halsted and Grace streets, the Mary-Arrchie, Strawdog, and Oracle theaters were all found within a stone's throw of each other as late as the 2010s. Of these, only the Strawdog is still in operation today, having moved to the Ravenswood neighborhood.

Farther to the north, Rogers Park didn't have one compact district, but smaller-scale stage theaters were scattered throughout the community — the Lifeline, the Factory, the Center Theater Ensemble, the Wisdom Bridge, the Heartland Studio Theatre in a storefront alongside the since-demolished Heartland Café.

Neighborhood theater districts are not completely gone, Quade pointed out. The Lifeline is still going in Rogers Park in its longtime space on Glenwood Avenue, while The Factory found a permanent home on Howard Street in 2016 after moving around between buildings and neighborhoods over many years. While the former Theatre Building/Stage 773 is gone, its neighbor on Belmont Avenue, Theater Wit, is still around in the former Bailiwick Repertory Theatre space — and has made an effort to keep pricing access low so its venue remains accessible to fledgling theater companies. The Annoyance Theatre relocated to a space just opposite the "L" tracks on Belmont Avenue in 2013.

Nevertheless, Quade agreed that the audience for stage productions is changing in Chicago, and the market for the kind of show she launched more than three decades ago is not there anymore.

"When 'Late Nite Catechism' started in 1993, it was very common to go to a late-night performance of a show. That's why it's called 'Late Nite Catechism' — it started at 11 o'clock — and there were lots of late-night shows you could go see, and it was fun," Quade said. "You could go to dinner. You could go to an 11 o'clock show. That is gone. That is largely missing now."

Quade also said the shows with the kind of run "Late Nite Catechism" has boasted are a thing of the past, too.

"I think that, you saw Late Nite Catechism — it's in its 33rd year — you'll never see that again. You look at Blue Man Group, which ran for 20-some years. Again, I just don't think you're going to see that," she said. "You're going to see a lot more shows coming into the city two weekends, three weekends, maybe. When you see a six-week run now, you're just like: 'Holy cow! I hope they can make the full six weeks.'"

While Jones' 2023 assessment focused on problems within the theater industry, Quade noted that audience behavior and preferences are changing, too. Among other factors, Quade noted that audiences from the suburbs seem less interested in coming into Chicago to see a play, in part because of worries about crime.

"I just did one of my shows, 'Late Nite Catechism' was just out in Chicago Ridge, and I talked with some people there and said, 'Oh, I've got shows in the city if you want to come see them.' They just said, 'Oh no, we never go into the city,'" she said. "That's what's missing. It's that constant fear."

Quade also said fewer tourists from outside the Chicago area and the U.S. are turning out to see plays. She said action needs to be taken to stem all the audience erosion.

"So there's this whole mix of, How are we going to keep theater in Chicago going?'" Quade said. "It's got to be local support. It has to be suburban support. It has to be tourism."

Quade also noted that the COVID pandemic "did a real big number" on theater in Chicago, as people got used to staying home and watching streaming television at the expense of live plays.

"What you miss is that opportunity to be in a live theater venue watching someone onstage — something you're never going to see again, because every performance is different. Every performance has a little bit of something that's different," Quade said, "and you're seeing it with other people, with an audience where you can enjoy, you can laugh, you can be stunned, and you're participating in a social event, and you don't get that by sitting at home watching TV."

A strong Chicago theater community keeps the scene viable and vibrant

The demise of old and beloved venues notwithstanding, finding success stories in today's Chicago theater scene doesn't require looking very far.

In January, David Schwimmer and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker were on hand as the Lookingglass Theatre Company unveiled its newly renovated space at the Water Tower Waterworks off the Magnificent Mile. Lookingglass returned to the stage under new leadership after an 18-month hiatus amid post-pandemic financial struggles, and has a new season on tap featuring stage ensemble member Matthew C. Yee's "White Rooster," and fellow ensemble member Kevin Douglas' "Untitled Vampire Play."

The Goodman Theatre downtown celebrated its centennial this year and just began its annual run of dramaturg Tom Creamer's adaptation of "A Christmas Carol." Highlights at the Goodman this year have also included a production of the 1978 Harold Pinter play "Betrayal" featuring Helen Hunt, Ian Barford, and Robert Sean Leonard, and the Chicago-centric play "Ashland Avenue," starring Francis Guinan as the owner of a struggling mom-and-pop TV shop and Jenna Fischer of "The Office" fame as his daughter.

In October, the Court Theatre in Hyde Park was among 19 performing arts organizations to receive a $125,000 two-year grant from the Walder Foundation to benefit its engagement department, fostering connections with teens, educators, and residents of the city's South Side. Onstage at the Court, Marti Lyons' adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" runs through Dec. 14.

Meanwhile, it hasn't just been the heavy hitters like Steppenwolf and the Chicago Shakespeare that have celebrated the opening of new buildings in recent years.

In 2018, Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre — a smaller company founded in 1997 — opened a new space at 721 Howard St. in Evanston after years of staging plays in the old No Exit Café coffeehouse, now Le Piano, in Rogers Park. The musical "Urinetown" is now onstage at Theo Ubique, and has been extended through Jan. 4.

In 2023, the American Blues Theater — which was connected with the American Theater Co. that staged numerous acclaimed productions at a North Center neighborhood space before closing in 2018 — moved into its first permanent home in a building at Lincoln and Talman avenues that had once housed a Walgreens and later a Dollar General. The new space for American Blues brought live theater to a neighborhood where residents previously would have had to get in the car and go to another community to find it. The annual run of "It's a Wonderful Life: Live in Chicago" has begun at American Blues.

The Chopin Theatre, a standby in Wicker Park since 1990, stages a roster of plays along with musical and cultural events. Quade said she was "blown away" by the Chopin's Jeff-recommended production of "Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical," which has been extended into January.

Other theater companies and venues large and small around the city also continue to draw crowds. To name a few, the Greenhouse Theater Center in Lincoln Park is simultaneously staging productions of the Tony Award-winning family musical "A Year with Frog and Toad," Tennessee Williams' "A Two Character Play," and Jeffrey Hatcher's "A Picasso." At A Red Orchid Theatre in Old Town, now in its 33rd season, the Chicago premiere of Anna Ouyang Moench's "Birds of North America" takes the stage in January. At the avant-garde Trap Door Theatre in Bucktown, a stage adaptation of Paolo Maurensig's novel "A Devil Comes to Town" has been extended through Dec. 6.

Newer theater companies are also seeing success. For one, the Invictus Theatre Company, incorporated in January 2017 and operating from the Windy City Playhouse in the Irving Park neighborhood, earned a Jeff Recommendation for Chicago playwright Marcus Gardley's "The House That Will Not Stand," which runs through Dec. 14. Invictus also put on a highly regarded production of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" that ran for three months this past summer.

And downtown, the Studebaker Theater, located in the Fine Arts Building at 410 S. Michigan Ave., has seen great success since its grand reopening in 2022.

The Studebaker is hardly a new venue. It opened in 1898 as a Vaudeville-style opera house, and the Shubert Organization of Broadway notoriety took over in 1917 and turned it into a touring house. The space was used as a TV studio for a time in the 1950s, and then went on to host A-list touring productions for a quarter century, including Eartha Kitt in "The Owl and the Pussycat" in 1964, and Henry Fonda in "Time of Your Life" in 1973.

But in 1982, the Studebaker became a movie multiplex. In 2000, the multiplex closed, and the space went dark and sat vacant for years.

But today, the Studebaker is back with a variety of events onstage, offering a space for new musicals with commercial aspirations and a home for local companies such as the Chicago Opera Theatre. The Studebaker is also a venue for the Chicago International Puppet Festival, and plays host to the Peabody Award-winning live NPR game show "Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me."

"It's not lost on me that when I started working in the Fine Arts Building and the Studebaker, and we started renovation on the Studebaker, it was right as the Royal George had closed," said Jacob Harvey, managing artistic director of theaters at the Fine Arts Building. "And so we were looking at that as an opportunity to sort of fill a gap that Chicago sorely needed for a space of that high, mid-range size for shows... and theater companies, not only in Chicago, but as a viable venue for shows from out of town to be able to bring their show to Chicago, and engage Chicago theater artists as well."

With the Studebaker standing as an example of success, Harvey emphasized that the loss of venues like the Royal George, Briar Street, and the old Theatre Building should not be taken as an epitaph for theater in Chicago.

"I'm not sure that the losing of the spaces is a reflection of the vibrancy or the viability of theater in Chicago, and I think those distinctions are important and interesting to make," Harvey said.

Harvey explained that the niche that Chicago occupies in the theater universe might not support long, open-ended runs. But he said what Chicago does provide is a space for producers coming in with plays or musicals and development, or starting a tour after a successful commercial moment in perhaps New York or London.

"I think there's a reason why producers that I talk to are targeting Chicago as a place to bring their show — whether it be to launch a tour here, or it be to develop their play or their musical here," Harvey said. "We have the talent. We have the infrastructure. We have the community for it."

Noting that the Studebaker is experiencing a renaissance, Harvey expressed optimism for a renaissance for "Chicago theater by and large," given the cooperative and collaborative spirit of the Chicago theater community.

"We are uniquely situated in Chicago, and our theater community is just that," Harvey said. "We stand on each other's shoulders. We help each other out. We share resources. We pool resources. And I think we're going to see a lot more really interesting and creative collaboration among theater artists and theater companies to help buoy (us) through this moment of transition."

Harvey said it is undeniable that theater companies are struggling, and many have lost funding. But he said this should not at all be taken as a prophecy of doom.

"The thing that I think is unique to Chicago theater and the Chicago theater community is that we're able to hold space for that as an opportunity, and work together, and collaborate together, as an opportunity to get through moments like this," Harvey said.

In the meantime, Quade urged everyone to get out and enjoy a play in Chicago, which she said remains one of the best cities in the country for theater.

"You've got to take a chance," she said. "Don't sit home and just watch Netflix — that's what I tell people."

In its Sunday edition, the paper published a summer reading list with the titles, authors, and descriptions of 15 books. But it turned out that 10 of those 15 books do not exist.

Author Isabel Allende was born in Peru to Chilean parents. She gained worldwide acclaim in 1982 with the publication of a novel "the House of the Spirits," which began as a letter to her dying grandfather. She is also the author of "Daughter of Fortune," "Island Beneath the Sea," and "The Wind Knows My Name," among other titles.

But Allende has never written a book called "Tidewater Dreams." Yet, there that imaginary book is, first on the Sun-Times list — claiming to be "a multigenerational saga set in a coastal town where magical realism meets environmental activism."

Chicago author Rebecca Makkai gained acclaim in 2018 for "The Great Believers," the powerful and heartbreaking story of the AIDS epidemic and its devastating effect on a group of young men living in and around the city's Boystown or Northalsted community in the 1980s. Following its publication, Chicago Magazine writer Adam Morgan wrote, "I'll never be able to look at my adopted neighborhood with the same naïveté."

Makkai's follow-up to "The Great Believers" was "I Have Some Questions for You," an acclaimed literary mystery novel released in 2023. She has never written a book called "Boiling Point" that "centers on a climate scientist forced to reckon with her own family's environmental impact when her teenage daughter becomes an eco-activist targeting her mother's wealthy clients."

But the summer reading list that ran in the Sun-Times claims she did, and calls it her follow-up to "The Great Believers" — something with which "I Have Some Questions for You" protagonist Bodie Kane might take issue.

"The Last Algorithm" by Andy Weir, "Hurricane Season" by Brit Bennett, "The Collectors Piece" by Taylor Jenkins Reid, "Nightshade Market" by Min Jin Lee, "The Longest Day" by Rumaan Alam, "Migrations" by Maggie O'Farrell, "The Rainmakers" by Percival Everett, and "Salt and Honey" by Delia Owens are all AI-generated fake titles too.

The authors attached to the names of the fake books are all real. Lee even wrote on X: "I have not written and will not be writing a novel called 'Nightshade Market.' Thank you."

The last five books — "Bonjour Tristesse" by Françoise Sagan, "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter, "Dandelion Wine" by Ray Bradbury, "Call Me By Your Name" by André Aciman, and "Atonement" by Ian McEwan — are all real titles. However, none of those books are new as one might expect for a summer reading list — the descriptions even acknowledge that "Bonjour Tristesse" was published in 1954 and "Dandelion Wine" in 1957.

The Sun-Times special section was licensed from a national content partner that used a freelance writer. The section was not approved by the paper's newsroom.

"Our partner confirmed that a freelancer used an AI agent to write the article," Sun-Times parent organization Chicago Public Media chief executive officer Melissa Bell wrote Tuesday. "This should be a learning moment for all of journalism that our work is valued because of the relationship our very real, human reporters and editors have with our audiences."

The Sun-Times said it is updating its policies to ensure nothing like this happens again. The paper also noted that subscribers will not be charged for the premium edition in which the list appeartd.

The newsroom's union, the Chicago Sun-Times Guild, released a statement reading in part: "We take great pride in the union-produced journalism that goes into the respected pages of our newspaper and on our website. We're deeply disturbed that AI-generated content was printed alongside our work."

Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) announced in his ward newsletter that Wolf passed away on Friday, July 1, at the age of 77.

Wolf was born during the Holocaust in a concentration camp, and later moved to Chicago at the age of 4 with his surviving family members, according to Tunney.

The original location of The Bagel was founded in 1950 by Wolf's grandparents, Chaim and Elsa Golenzer, and Wolf's parents, Ruth and Edward Wolf, according to Wolf's obit.

"He typed the daily menus because was the only family member that had mastered enough English at the time," Wolf's obit said.

The Bagel was originally located at 4806 N. Kedzie Ave. in the Albany Park neighborhood. In 1977, The Bagel moved from Albany Park to 3000 W. Devon Ave. in West Rogers Park -- a location that became a campaign stop for the likes of Mayor Harold Washington. 

The Bagel in turn moved from its West Rogers Park location to its current space at 3107 N. Broadway in East Lakeview in 1992.

The Bagel also opened a location at the Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie in 1987. That location closed in 2018.

Wolf was also a commissioner and president of the Lake View East Chamber of Commerce, his obit noted.

Wolf is survived by his spouse of more than 60 years, Mitchell Kaufman; his aunt, Haya Golezner; and many friends, according to his obit.