The annual meetings of the Chicago Loop Alliance are no place for truth-telling about the self-evident problems of the Chicago Loop. As Friday’s big gathering at Willis Tower made clear, this is a nonprofit group filled with vested interests whose job it is to promote the fortunes of Chicago’s struggling central district.
Nonetheless, we were gratified to see a new focus on the promotion of arts and culture, clearly key to the future of a downtown Chicago unlikely ever to return to the teeming hub of office workers that has defined its history. One need only look at the relative fortunes of our downtown north of Monroe Street, where the streets are filled nightly with attendees on those theater-heavy blocks, with “Hamilton” arriving back this coming week, compared with those below that dividing line.
South of Monroe, Loop sidewalks at night are mostly empty, thanks to the emptying out of the traders who once populated this area and the struggles of the educational sector that was supposed to replace them.
Still, the room was filled with those trying to promote and improve things all over the Loop. One of them was the departing and widely admired president and CEO of the Chicago Loop Alliance, Michael M. Edwards.
In his brief parting remarks, his choice of a single word to describe what the Loop needs the most struck us as very much on the money.
The word? Confidence.
Edwards was using that term to encompass such crucial constituent elements therein as the perceptions of public safety, cleanliness, economic vitality and, he said, “beauty.”
Beauty is not a word we hear at lot around town. Yet our famous Loop is indeed a beautiful place.
And, yes, a thriving Loop must instill confidence, just as it deserves the confidence of all Chicagoans justly proud of their city.
We could not have put it better ourselves.
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