New data from the Chicago Loop Alliance show that Downtown pedestrian traffic now exceeds pre-pandemic levels from 2019, with more visitors drawn by arts and culture and dining.
The new numbers validate efforts to make the Loop a social destination and combat high retail and office vacancy rates that have plagued the area since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to CLA President and CEO Michael Edwards.
But even as the Loop evolves into a more complete urban district, there are concerns that threats from President Donald Trump to send the National Guard to Chicago — currently delayed due to a federal appeals court ruling — could impact progress.
However, it’s arts and culture programming that’s “driving the bus at the moment,” Edwards said.
On weekends, pedestrian traffic in the Loop is surpassing 2019 levels at 116%, according to the CLA’s latest State of the Loop report. That number is largely driven by arts and culture events attended by people who aren’t normally Downtown, Edwards said.
“If anybody hasn’t been Downtown lately, they really ought to come down and check it out, because it’s not what they hear on the national news,” he told the Sun-Times recently. “We have more pedestrian volumes than we had in the past. People are using the district more as a social center than they are using it as a business.”
Past CLA studies show that more people attend arts and culture events than the games of all of the city’s professional sports teams combined. Chicagoans are also attending cultural experiences — like Broadway shows and art exhibitions — at a cadence well above the national average, too.
Several years after those studies, arts and culture attendance numbers continue to trend upward, according to the organization’s latest report.
“It’s a pretty compelling message about how important arts and culture [is],” Edwards said.
Late summer events in the Loop, such as Lollapalooza and the Chicago Triathlon, drove more than $514 million in direct economic impact in the third quarter, surpassing late 2024 numbers. In September, more than one million people visited the Loop for the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and Sundays on State events.
The report also shows that millions of Chicago residents and visitors used the Chicago Transit Authority to get around the Loop in the third quarter, with the CTA experiencing its highest ridership since 2019 during this year’s Lollapalooza weekend.
Theater performances were another big driver of visitors to the Loop in the third quarter, up 11% from last year.
Goodman Theatre executive director John Collins is among the downtown cultural figures in Chicago who say the increased foot traffic is paying dividends.
The Goodman is welcoming about 200,000 attendees each year, Collins said. That figure, he said, is right on par with pre-pandemic numbers — and it keeps going up.
“There’s just more and more things to do, drawing more and more people and families down here,” he said. “We continue to see more and more people who are coming and taking a chance on something new.”
Edwards said he’s seeing more demand for residential options in the Loop and points to several office-to-apartment conversions as examples of how empty corporate space is being reused.
At the Bankers Building at 105 W. Adams St., more than 400,000 square feet of “underutilized space” will be transformed into studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments.
“We need more housing in the Loop for us to survive and continue to evolve into something more like a neighborhood than a business district,” Edwards said.
That includes finding tenants for the just over 50 vacant storefronts in the Loop, the majority of them along State Street and south of Monroe Street.
“Despite what the national news is about cities, cities are still the most dynamic places,” Edwards said. “[They] drive the economy of the entire nation. It’s crazy that our federal administration is so negative on cities, because without them, there’s no economy.”