Mayor Brandon Johnson covered everything from soaring office vacancies and crime to the need to develop job-creating industries Thursday in a spirited and far-reaching address at the Economic Club of Chicago marking his first 100 days in office.

Sharing the stage with civic leaders including Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Curt Bailey, president of Related Midwest, Johnson sermonized his vision for the “greatest freaking city in the world” as an inclusive, creative and innovative economic center.

“When business is thriving and successful, we all win because we’re creating more opportunities to invest in people,” Johnson said.

Johnson is considered one of Chicago’s most progressive mayors ever and has been eyed warily by the business community after a campaign in which offered proposals including a tax hike on hotels, reinstituting a city head tax, tripling the tax on high-end real estate transactions, taxing jet fuel and levying tolls on securities trading.

He has since made an effort to reach out to business, and his speech Thursday received a mostly warm reception.

But some of his answers to questions posed by Conagra Brands CEO Sean Connolly, who became chair of the Economic Club in July, were met with a more muted response. Notably, Johnson acknowledged Chicago has a “long way to go” to reduce crime, a key concern for many business leaders.

Johnson repeatedly spoke of leveraging the power of government to meet the challenges facing the city while asking the business community to hire young people, relocate to downtown and function as global ambassadors to extol the virtues of Chicago, whose reputation has been battered by a recent corporate exodus amid pandemic disruption.

Like many large cities, Chicago saw a spike in crime during the pandemic, with 804 homicides in 2021, mostly from gun violence. While homicides declined to 695 last year, theft and carjackings continued to rise, according to data from the Chicago Police Department.

The Chicago area also saw the departures of some high-profile corporate headquarters in 2022, including investment firm Citadel, which moved to Miami along with its billionaire founder, Ken Griffin; Caterpillar, which relocated from north suburban Deerfield to Irving, Texas; and aerospace giant Boeing, which moved to Arlington, Virginia, after more than 20 years in the West Loop.

Griffin cited growing crime as a major reason why Citadel opted to leave Chicago after more than three decades in the city.

Making Chicago safe “is something I think about every day,” said Johnson, who lives in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side. “Violence is literally outside my front door.”

Johnson touted the hiring of 24,000 young people as part of Chicago’s annual summer jobs program, which he called the “best public safety plan” to respond to crime in the city.

“That’s the immediate solution, hiring young people,” Johnson said.

He said the city plans to promote 100 of the 200 additional police detectives he promised during his mayoral campaign within his first year in office “to actually solve crime.

The Chicago office market remains in a deep, pandemic-driven slump, with companies continuing to shed space as long-term leases come up for renewal. Vacancy in the city’s central business district hit a record 23.4% during the second quarter, according to data from real estate services firm Avison Young.

When asked how he would pitch Chicago’s central business district to companies looking to relocate, Johnson tried to spin a negative into a positive.

“First of all, we do have the space,” Johnson said. “So let’s start there. That’s an opportunity, we have the space.”

Johnson said the central business district is “critical to the vitality” of the city, and “well-positioned” at a time of challenge. But filling the vacancies and luring new enterprises downtown, he said, is going to require creativity and innovation.

“The central business district has an opportunity to feed the desires that exist,” Johnson said. “It’s really going to require us to be thoughtful, to be innovative and, yes, to take some risks. But that’s who we are as a city.”

Johnson said industries that are the focus for development include logistics, manufacturing, clean energy, biotech, quantum computing and life sciences, all of which he said have the ability to grow and create jobs.

He also offered his pitch for attracting those businesses. Chicago’s top universities and workforce make the city attractive to those industries, Johnson said. He also praised Chicago’s natural resources, transportation systems and “incredible entertainment” as incentives.

“When you bring your businesses here, your workers get to have a full experience,” Johnson said. “When they get off, they can go hang out downtown, spend money to generate the type of revenue so we can invest in schools, health care, education, jobs and affordable housing.”

At the same time, Johnson said the city needs to be more restrictive about using public dollars to subsidize private developments such as Lincoln Yards, The 78 and potentially, new sports stadiums.

Johnson did not rule out public-private economic development but said the city does not have the type of capital available to “ignite” mega-developments.

“We have a personal responsibility as a city to make sure that we’re doing right by taxpayers,” Johnson said. “We have done it a certain way for a very long time in this city and it has not proven to be effective, quite frankly.”

During the balance of his one-hour appearance at the Economic Club, Johnson touched on a number of other hot-button issues, including a commitment to funding pensions while addressing pension reform; creating a balanced budget that doesn’t rely on property tax as the “sole source of revenue generation” and working with an elected school board to “fully fund” Chicago Public Schools.

Johnson also took some credit for Chicago’s selection as host of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, which happened after his election in April. He pointed to the event as an opportunity to showcase “the vitality and the vibrancy and the diversity” of the city. He didn’t, however, mention NASCAR, which completed its first Chicago Street Race through Grant Park during a rainy July Fourth weekend.

Choose Chicago, the city’s tourism arm, is expected to publish a commissioned economic impact study this month, which could play into whether Johnson gives the green light to next summer’s race — the second of three booked by the administration of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

In closing Thursday, Johnson made several requests of the business leaders in attendance.

“I need your expertise,” he said. “I need you to look out for the young people in this city — jobs, internships. But we also need to make sure that you are being ambassadors around the globe. Everything that the country needs is in Chicago. Tell that story.”

rchannick@chicagotribune.com

Originally Published: Sep 08, 2023 at 1:43 pm