“We greatly appreciate our continuing relationships in Chicago and throughout Illinois. We look forward to maintaining a strong presence in the city and the state.”
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun doesn’t sound like someone being driven out of Chicago, but Republicans looking to score points against Gov. JB Pritzker asserted as much Thursday when the company announced plans to relocate its headquarters to Arlington, Virginia.
From a political standpoint, why wouldn’t they? Boeing moving to Chicago in 2001 from Seattle was a massive win for the city, and it’s easy to grab a headline by painting its departure as a major loss. Whether the strategy plays with voters depends on if they read into the story.
For one thing, the company will keep more than 400 employees in Chicago, roughly 80% of its local workforce. For another, as much as people may want to paint Boeing’s decision as a result of city or state taxes, crime or political corruption, there’s a very practical explanation: the military is a more reliable customer than passenger airlines.
“It’s just really clear that Boeing is becoming more and more dependent upon the Pentagon right now than it is on commercial aviation,” said Scott Hamilton, founder of aviation analysis firm Leeham, in an interview with Seattle’s KIRO-FM. “This makes all the sense in the world.”
Boeing recently reported $1.2 billion in first-quarter losses, unsurprising for an industry so affected by COVID-19 mitigations and certainly not singularly attributable to where 500 workers write emails. Nor does anyone seriously think Capitol Hill lobbying and defense spending are corruption-free zones.
More salient would be asking city officials about facing the reality that Chicago office space will never be as fully utilized as pre-pandemic levels. Colliers International, a commercial real estate firm, said the downtown vacancy rate was almost 20% in late March.
Companies large and small rethinking their office space and which workers need to be where and when should dramatically change land and property use, and the cities that can best figure how to transition into new commuting realities stand to benefit significantly. There’s no indication Chicago has a leg up in this race, but Boeing’s “departure,” such as it is, presents a fantastic opportunity for municipal leaders everywhere to seriously engage the topic.
Middle of Everything
In conjunction with a new state campaign, I’ve invited readers to share their favorite Illinois tourist attractions.
Mike Wheeland: “As a student at SIU-Carbondale in the ‘80s, I was flabbergasted by the difference in terrain between where I grew up in northern Illinois and down there. One of our favorite hiking spots was Garden of the Gods. The huge rock formations and bluffs are unlike anything I had ever seen in Illinois.”
• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Media. Follow him on Twitter @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.
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