CHICAGOBUSINESS.COM I AUGUST 21, 2023
Crucial O’Hare terminal revamp is years late The question now is whether the Johnson administration can finally get an ambitious effort to revamp the airport off the ground By Greg Hinz and John Pletz
With all his legendary gusto, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel in February 2018 announced a massive project critical to Chicago’s economic engine: An $8.5 billion expansion and modernization of O’Hare International Airport’s outmoded terminals, a step he declared would put the city at the heart of international air travel growth and come online by 2026. Five and a half years of COVID, raging inflation and City Hall turmoil later, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way. The big airport job has virtually vanished from the news. O’Hare traffic has been relatively slow to recover from COVID. There’s been jostling between the city and its airline partners over spiraling costs, and construction on the first of three promised new terminals is not even scheduled to begin until the last half of 2024. The latest projected date for
completion on the project: 2032 — six years late. The terminal revamp clearly has experienced a delayed, bumpy takeoff. Though not unusual in ambitious aviation projects — O’Hare’s tranche of new runways was delivered several years late — the question now is whether the Johnson administration and particularly Aviation Commissioner Jamie Rhee finally can get the program off the ground, even as modernization efforts at competing airports in New York and Los Angeles pick up momentum. The project is only a little more than 30% designed. Discussions with the airlines, who foot the bill through landing fees and rent, are intensifying. Airlines and the city need to come to agreement on exactly what will get built, at what cost and when. In an interview and tour of the airfield, Rhee shrugs off
The sweet smell of innovation at Mars Wrigley’s candy lab Teachers’ Pension Fund Take a look inside the research and development hub for the global candy company, which makes Snickers, Twix, M&M’s and Extra gum I By Ally Marotti
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p in a lab in Mars Wrigley’s Goose Island innovation center, a machine mimics how people chew gum. Chewbacca, as it is affectionately called, spurts green liquid into its chambers to imitate saliva, then chomps up and down, back and forth, squishing, squishing, squishing. The test subject on a recent afternoon is Respawn Tropical Punch, a gum the candy company rolled out to try to capture the sizable gamer market. It’s infused with B vitamins and green tea extract to help with focus. Chewbacca is testing how those vitamins seep out as the gum is chewed. See MARS on Page 16
New ideas often start in the marketing department, which tracks hot trends in candy markets.
See O’HARE on Page 19
says no to Lincoln Yards The fund said it will not pursue an opportunity to back Sterling Bay on the stalled megaproject
By Danny Ecker
The Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund has declined an overture from Sterling Bay to back the Lincoln Yards megaproject, sending the developer back on the hunt for a financial partner to bail out the stalled $6 billion development.
The pension fund said in a statement Aug. 18 that it has “declined to take further action” on a proposition from Sterling Bay to become the primary financial backer of the sprawling 53-acre project. Sterling Bay pitched the $12.1 billion fund’s See PENSION FUND on Page 9
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