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NOVEMBER 25, 2024

CRAIN’S

HEADING TOWARD THE CLIFF The Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace look for elusive dollars as lawmakers and others urge the three agencies to consolidate | PAGE 11

More staffing woes at the city’s health department Vacancies in behavioral health roles could threaten the CDPH’s plan to continue reopening mental health clinics across the metro area By Katherine Davis

The living room of a newly built home on Janssen Avenue, the fifth house on this list. | JAMESON SOTHEBY’S INTERNATIONAL REALTY

These are the highest-priced new-construction home sales High-end new builds in Chicago are thriving as buyers seek custom homes and a booming luxury market | By Dennis Rodkin

hen Eric Flanagan talks to potential buyers of a set of five new multimillion-dollar homes he’s planning in Lincoln Park, the developer expects they’ll want to make changes from his standard seven-bedroom layout. “They want two offices,” says Flanagan, principal of Merrion Development Group, which has five parcels on Grant Place, the last remnants of the old Lincoln Park Hospital site. “Or they want to combine three bedrooms to make a big second-floor family room.” With the kind of money they’ll spend — his prices start at $4.1 million — “they want to make sure it fits their life, their family,” Flanagan says. See HOME SALES on Page 22

The year is unlikely to close with more sales than 2022 and 2021, which both crossed the 100-sales mark.

The Chicago Department of Public Health will enter 2025 with hundreds of vacancies as it struggles to recruit and retain workers across the agency — particularly for its behavioral health services. Of the department’s 1,051 jobs budgeted for next year, about 280 are vacant, according to a CDPH spokesperson. And an ongoing citywide hiring freeze, first announced in September, means those jobs will likely remain unfilled for some time. The number of vacancies would be even higher if the CDPH’s budgeted roles for next year had not shrunk by 124 positions, a move largely made to cut costs as Mayor Brandon Johnson works to close a projected $1 billion gap across the entire city budget. Massive vacancies at the CDPH are not new. Year after year, the department, which is responsible for everything from restaurant inspections to delivering clinical care, has grappled with a high number of vacant roles. CDPH Commissioner Dr. Olu-

simbo "Simbo" Ige told the City Council in a budget hearing earlier this month that her department has struggled to hire workers, primarily because of an industrywide labor shortage of nurses, physician assistants and even doctors. But Ige emphasized the department also struggles to offer salaries that compete with the private sector, saying 100 job candidates rejected offers from the CDPH this year. “We are not very competitive in medical positions,” Ige told the council at the Nov. 7 hearing. For example, the city is proposing offering psychiatric nurse practitioners annual salaries between $127,000 and $131,800 next year, according to budget documents. Data from career site Indeed shows the average annual salary for that role in Chicago is about $130,000, but some psychiatric nurse practitioners are fetching as much as $179,000. And unlike the private sector, government salaries usually cannot be negotiated as much. See HEALTH on Page 22

TECHNOLOGY The outrage over delivery fees has waned, but a lawsuit against Grubhub lives on. PAGE 3

CRAIN’S LIST See our annual ranking of the largest hospitals in the Chicago area. PAGE 8

Thomas J. McAfee