Tag Archives: Chicago

Chicago Business Leaders Urging Companies to Bring Their Workers Back to the Office

Economy, , ,


Business leaders in Chicago want downtown full again. They say it’s safe, and the economy needs them. Getting people back to the office was the topic of a roundtable discussion with World Business Chicago and the Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago. They emphasized that the city needs those 600,000 that used to populate the downtown area.


“Even if you can work from home, and many have and have figured it out, think about the shops you walk by from the train to the bus to get to the office and how many of those people need us,” said David Casper, CEO, BMO Financial Group. “As a bank that promotes commerce, it’s a bit of our responsibility.”


Some companies are considering bringing their office workers back after Memorial Day. Others are continuing with a hybrid schedule and work towards more people in the office later in the year. One problem is that many workers don’t feel safe on public transportation.


One key piece of the puzzle of getting people back to the office is increased vaccination rates. Illinois has about a 35% vaccination rate, but with safety protocols in place and financial incentives, downtown workers are getting vaccinated at a higher rate than the state in general.

Polar Vortex Costs US $1 Billion

News,
The Polar Vortex . Courtesy
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA

The last week in January 2019 sent the US Midwest into a deep freeze that cost lives and about $1 billion.


At least one dozen people were reported killed by below zero temperatures which in some place reached record lows from Minnesota, Illinois to the northeastern USA. Thousands of planes were grounded or delayed, other forms of transportation, such as trains, were disrupted, and schools sere shuttered in Wisconsin and Minnesota. There were also several power and water outages reported.


Supply chains were disrupted as rail and barge transportation was halted or slowed. Retail shops and restaurants also suffered losses as most people sheltered indoors.


The $1 billion estimated price tag is still considerably less than the damage caused by the polar vortex of 2014, which came to about $5 billion.


Not everyone lost during the freeze. Stores selling winter items did a brisk business along with online sales and drive-through restaurants.


Chicago reported a bone-chilling minus-30 degrees Celsius, and Minneapolis recorded minus-32. Wind-chills factors made some places feel like minus-70 degrees.

Emirates Airways Reaching Out to US

Transportation Industry, , , ,

Emirates Airlines expanding to USA
Emirates Airlines expanding to USA

The Dubai-based airline, Emirates, is pursuing a business plan which hopes to incorporate more American business travelers into its business model.

The airline just opened a new route between Dubai and Chicago’s O’Hare International airport, the ninth US city that they fly to. Five months before Emirates introduced a new route to Boston, adding to already established routes between Dubai and Los Angeles, New York’s JFK, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington Dulles, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Houston’s Bush Intercontinental airports.

In addition to increasing the cities in the USA that they service, the sometimes controversial airline is removing many of its smaller 777s and replacing them with jumbo jets to accommodate more passengers on each journey.

“The growth of Emirates in the U.S. is really at a very high pace,” says Hubert Frach, Emirates’ divisional senior vice president, commercial operations west.

“It’s a market strong, and with high potential, for business travel. And it’s a very strong outbound market, and certainly also a very strong inbound market for tourists, for visitors coming to the gateways in the U.S.”