Chicago’s Clybourn Corridor just keeps getting bigger

The Clybourn Corridor is it’s own kind of magnificent on the Near North Side. But an interesting thing has happened since Clybourn added another 400,000 square feet of retail space in 2015-- the retail vacancy rate jumped, but net asking rents jumped. The North Side’s massive shopping area now encompasses more than 2.6 million square feet, eclipsed by no other retail area in Chicago except for the Magnificent Mile, at 3.1 million square feet. According to recent research from Chicago-based retail brokerage Stone Real Estate, the expansion of the Clybourn Corridor shopping district increased overall vacancy to 10.1 percent, from 6.4 percent in late 2014. Stone’s report also mentioned that that increased supply has not dented the asking rent. In fact, they’ve gone up. Asking rents climbed to $46.64 in 2015, a 6.5 percent increase from 2014. But, there just may be good reasons for the blip: Much of the vacancy increase was because of the New City development, wh...