Ok, if you want to be all negative about this. Nobody likes a Debbie Downer.
Leaving the Land of Lincoln
Corporations are fleeing Chicago’s mayhem and high costs.
James Freeman, WSJ
Jan. 9, 2023 3:37 pm ET
Big corporations have been fleeing Chicagoland for more business-friendly jurisdictions. But now Allstate says that its big headquarters downsizing is because employees prefer to work from home. How long before these remote workers want to join the flight from expensive Illinois governance?
Robert Channick reports in the Chicago Tribune on the companies that have recently fled:
The Chicago area saw an exodus of 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.
The most recent high-profile departure was announced in November, when Lake Forest-based auto parts manufacturer Tenneco said it was shifting its headquarters to Michigan.
While the exits elicited some civic hand-wringing, the economic consequences may be minimal.
“It’s not that big a deal,” said David Collis, a professor at Harvard Business School and an expert on corporate strategy. “Corporate headquarters have become much less important than they were 20 years ago.”
What would we do without experts? Sure, the workplace is evolving but this evolution will be especially unkind to expensive, dysfunctional governments if employees have more freedom to roam. Allstate CEO Tom Wilson told the Tribune why he sold its campus in Northbrook and relocated to a modest building the company already owned across the street:
Allstate has given its 5,400 Chicago-area employees the ongoing choice of where they want to work, and 83% are choosing to work remotely, the company said. That turned its massive suburban campus into a ghost town, prompting the decision to sell it, Wilson said.
“That facility is a mile long and a half-mile wide and 2 million square feet, and we had nobody in it,” Wilson said. “We’re heating it, we’re cooling it. And I’m like, we should just get rid of this thing.”
Many homeowners in Illinois have been saying the same thing when they look at their property tax bills. Last month a Journal editorial noted U.S. Census data showing that Illinois lost more than 141,000 residents to other states in just one year, which made Illinois the third biggest loser after California and New York.
Just as in those other highly taxed, heavily regulated locales, pointing out the sad results of one-party governance can be controversial. After the dreary report from the Census Bureau, John Keilman wrote in the Chicago Tribune:
The conservative Illinois Policy Institute was quick to pounce on the news...
“Reforms that would ease Illinoisans’ tax burden or reduce arduous business regulations are needed to make the state more affordable and send people running to Illinois, rather than away from it,” the group said in a statement.
Beckie Bean, 71, and her husband left their longtime hometown of Quincy this year for the hills of Tennessee, moving into a house roughly 30 miles east of Knoxville. She said while they had long been frustrated by Illinois’ income and real estate taxes, the shutdowns prompted by the pandemic were the final straw.
“It’s beautiful and the people are so nice,” she said of her new home. “They’ve been very clear they didn’t want us to bring Illinois politics here. I said, ‘That’s why we’re here -- because you’re a red state.’”
Bryce Hill, who may be among the alleged pouncers at the Illinois Policy Institute, wrote at the time:
People moving out of Illinois drove the highest population loss on record in 2022... This marks the ninth consecutive year of population decline for Illinois, according to census estimates.
If they don’t have to come into the office, Allstate employees may pounce on the idea of joining this exodus.
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