CHICAGO — McDonald’s will occupy a two-building structure complete with green space and retail shops when it moves its headquarters to Chicago’s West Side in the spring of 2018. Construction on the $250 million complex starts next month.
Those and other features emerged Wednesday night as Sterling Bay, the developer behind the proposed 608,000-square-foot complex, shared new details about the project at a community meeting even while facing questions from neighbors anxious about the already critical shortage of parking in the area.
“The ward is concerned about it, the neighborhood is concerned about it, the whole city is concerned about it,” said Alderman Walter Burnett, adding that he’s working to ease issues like the lack of green space and parking in the area. Wednesday night was the first opportunity neighbors had to see designs for the new development, and they came with questions, crowding into a trendy area event space.
The headquarters will be divided into two main structures _ one of them nine stories high _ made with separate materials to fit in with the neighborhood, Sterling Bay managing principal Andy Gloor told the approximately 150 people gathered. The buildings will be separated by green space that will be open to the public. McDonald’s will occupy just under 80 percent of the complex, allowing room for other tenants that have not been identified, Gloor said.
In total, Sterling Bay has agreed to build about 300 parking spaces on the site itself, mostly underground, plus a few hundred more down the street.
The building will be notably different from the headquarters campus McDonald’s currently occupies in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook, which includes a hotel and an internal McDonald’s restaurant. Neither of those features will be a part of the downtown site.
The property is expected to generate approximately $4 million annually in property taxes, Gloor said, compared with current taxes of about $240,000 generated by the Harpo Studio site, where Oprah Winfrey once hosted her TV show.
Officials representing the fast-food giant did not attend the meeting, and one neighbor questioned the lack of participation by corporations like McDonald’s in community meetings.
The world’s largest burger chain officially announced last week its intention to move from Oak Brook to the site of Winfrey’s former Harpo Studios in downtown Chicago. Earlier Wednesday, an ordinance was introduced at City Council that would increase the allotted density of the West Side space.
If the expansion is approved by the city, developer Sterling Bay will pay more than $4 million to the city’s Neighborhoods Opportunity Fund, Adopt-A-Landmark Fund and Local Impact Fund. More than $3.2 million of it will be directed to the Neighborhoods Opportunity Fund, which aims to direct money from downtown development projects to Chicago’s depressed neighborhoods.
McDonald’s expects to move approximately 2,000 employees to the site, in an area of the city that has been alternatively called West Loop, Fulton Market or West Town. The move is part of McDonald’s effort to court more young, tech-savvy workers who prefer urban living.
Sterling Bay bought the Harpo site in 2014 for $30.5 million. It was home to “The Oprah Winfrey Show” for 25 years.