The city of Chicago has announced plans to convert a collection of empty office buildings in the city's downtown into mixed-used and residential towers.

The initiative, called LaSalle Street Reimagined, would convert nearly 2.3 million square feet (213,676 square metres) of vacant office buildings into residences and retail in the centre of Chicago, an area known as The Loop.

The plan incentivises developers to make the conversions and locally owned businesses through grants to inhabit vacant storefronts, building lobbies and former banking floors – while incorporating housing into the towers above.

Revitalising "monoculture of offices"

According to the city, at least 30 per cent of each proposed residential conversion will be dedicated to affordable housing – approximately 600 homes. The city defines affordable housing as residences affordable to "residents earning an average 60 per cent of the area median income".

"Based on multiple studies and reports, LaSalle's future can be maximized on behalf of the entire city by revitalising its monoculture of offices with a mix of new uses and public amenities that extend beyond the typical 9-to-5 workday," said the city.

The city said that it is providing "assistance" to developers who undertake these projects under the initiative and that "almost $1 billion in total investments" are being put towards the redevelopment.

Five of these adaptive reuse projects have already been put forward by collection developers and accepted by the city, with an announcement planned for this summer over which ones will move forward.

The prospective costs of each conversion, which include retrofitting office floors for use as apartments, range from $50 million to $300 million.

Along with affordable housing, the city has highlighted innovation, public realm enhancements, neighbor-oriented amenities, and historic building sustainability as focuses.

LaSalle Street Remimanged was initiated by Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2022 before the plan was stalled when current Mayor Brandon Johnson took office.

It was recently pushed forward an in effort to mitigate growing vacancy rates in the city's downtown Loop district, in light of the 2020 pandemic.

According to Bloomberg News, it joins several investments in the area, including granting more than $1 million to downtown restaurants.

Nearby, developer Prime/Capri Interests LLC, which is one of the investors in the LaSalle Street Reimagined project, is converting the historic James R Thompson Center building into a Google office.

Affordable housing has become a focus around the globe as housing prices continue to climb. Recently, Dezeen launched a series examining the future of social housing in a variety of contexts – read more here.

Elsewhere in Chicago, construction has commenced on a 72-storey SOM skyscraper and a Helmut Jahn skyscraper recently topped out.

The image is by mindfrieze/Flickr.