After years of neglect, many of Chicago's industrial corridors are making big comebacks. Areas like Fulton Market and River North have blossomed over the last 15 years, transforming from skid rows into some of the most popular spots for city dwellers and the businesses they work at. However, as these two areas reach critical mass, attention is moving up the Chicago River's North Branch to places like Goose Island.

Goose Island may be best know for the beer company that takes its name from the manmade island, however there are other big players doing business in the neighborhood. Wrigley moved into their Global Innovation Center on Goose Island back in 2005, and more recently, the UI Labs Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute opened in the former Republic Windows & Doors plant on the island. However, real estate developers believe that this is just the beginning for Goose Island. In the next 10 years, hundreds—if not thousands—of new office workers will be commuting to Goose Island for their jobs. There are several major adaptive reuse projects underway, and also some new construction that will help draw companies to this old industrial corridor.

But beyond the island's position to be a leader in the workplace, it is also poised to become an important recreation space as it is surrounded by the Chicago River. Goose Island, and other industrial areas being redevelopment along the Chicago River's North Branch will allow residents and workers to have river access to these areas for the first time in many, many years.

To discuss the transformation of Goose Island and what it means to Chicago, we've reached out to Matt Garrison of R2 Companies, a developer with several projects underway on Goose Island, including the adaptive reuse effort at 909 W. Bliss, the redevelopment of the Goose Island Boat Yard, and a large Gensler-designed tech office complex on North Branch Street.





Some developers have said that the city's inventory of large older industrial buildings represents a competitive advantage for Chicago. Would you agree?

Absolutely. The most dense and vibrant neighborhoods in Chicago tend to have a great stock of historic buildings. Many of these are heavy-timber construction and are literally irreplaceable. Large, monolithic office buildings are cool, but it’s best when they are balanced-out by smaller, historic buildings that feel more accessible—it helps create an attractive contrast. This mix is an important urban planning principle, and a major factor when we seek out up and coming neighborhoods. In terms of large-scale adaptive reuse opportunities, there is a limited supply and a lot of demand in the developer submarkets, so the footprint will continue to expand. We believe Goose Island buildings are some of the most unique and best located remaining opportunities for adaptive reuse in Chicago.

You're working on a number of adaptive reuse projects on Goose Island, an area along the Chicago River's North Branch that has a long history of being an industrial corridor. What is one of the biggest challenges in renovating and repurposing an older structure to meet a new use?

A building is a living and breathing thing. If an older structure isn’t heated or cooled in Chicago, for even a few years, it will fall apart from the inside out. We look for buildings with great bones that have been built to withstand the test of time, like 909 W. Bliss, a 300,000-square-foot concrete loft in Goose Island. Our goal is to restore buildings to their former grandeur, while modernizing them so they will be around for the next hundred years. Balancing the past and the future is the contrast that makes repurposing an old structure so special. It's different than building a ground up development, where value engineering often defines the form. In Goose Island's case, the form exists, and you need to work with the form to enable modern functionality. This is an awesome challenge.

When working with an architect on a major adaptive reuse project, say like the one at Bliss Street, who takes the lead? Does a developer provide some guidelines and let the architects take over, or is it a collaborative effort from start to finish?

It’s collaborative, but it takes trust and time to develop a design relationship. We hired HPA Architecture on 909 Bliss because of their great work with Chicago adaptive re-use at 1K Fulton, Kendall College’s building on Goose Island, and many other projects. We have been working with Jim Plunkard and Tom Pope at HPA for 10+ years, beginning with student housing and complicated entitlement projects at Big 10 Campuses. Trust is hugely important. We have worked with Gensler on other projects like the Milwaukee Post Office, a very unique and complex 1.1 million square foot Brutalist building on 9 acres of river frontage. They have an amazing collaborative process that starts with distilling our vision for the project by literally filling the walls of a room with imagery and creating a mosaic of our vision for the project. R2 is lucky to have several licensed architects on our team, so we have architects and professional designers on the developer side to partner with outside firms and work to get the best possible result.





In the case of Goose Island as a whole, it's not just bringing these buildings up to date, but also addressing the area's neglected infrastructure. Is it a "chicken or the egg" situation? Does there need to be more investment in Goose Island before we see infrastructure improvements, or are infrastructure improvements required to see new investment?

They go hand-in-hand. Minimal infrastructure investments on Goose Island have been fine for industrial users, but office, retail, and residential uses are innately denser and require better infrastructure. The island can support a lot of density today, but over the next five to ten years we’re hoping to add thousands of jobs to Goose Island. The city fully understands this and is in the design stage for two new four-lane bridges on both of the Division Street bridges and is making major improvements to the intersection at Chicago Avenue and Halsted Street, which will take place in the next few years.

There has already been substantial investment on Goose Island, including The Wrigley Innovation Center, Kendall College, UI Labs, Boelter, Trunk Club, Amazon and even venture-backed start-ups like Sprig. It’s time for the infrastructure to catch up with the pace of this investment. Can you imagine this sub-market optimized, connected and properly marketed? How much investment will it attract then? Rather than chicken and egg, I would call it a snowball effect, and it is happening right now.

You've called the Goose Island transformation Goose Island 2.0. When we're talking about the "renovation" of this area, it's not just the buildings and the infrastructure—it's the way we talk about it. Why is this important?

We’re trying to create a submarket. A big challenge is shifting the perception of Goose Island from a somewhat mysterious industrial zone into a place that is more relevant to Chicago’s future. Luckily, we’re not the first people to do this. The island has many similarities to the DUMBO Industrial District in Brooklyn and Playa Vista in Los Angeles. What’s terrific is that we have already seen buildings at the edge of River North, West Town and the Clybourn Corridor refer to themselves as part of the Goose Island neighborhood, like 600 W. Chicago. Goose Island has a great brand name and that is becoming more and more attractive.

We're seeing a lot of new development and redevelopment along the Chicago River's North Branch at areas like Goose Island, the former Finkl steel campus and the Lathrop Homes. What does this mean for the North Branch as an area for recreation and leisure?

You should include the Tribune sites as well. Chicago has a smart ordinance that mandates a 30-foot setback where riverwalk must be built on any new riverfront development. Over one billion dollars will be invested into Tribune, Goose Island, Finkl, and Lathrop. In each case, the river will become accessible to the public for the first time in 150+ years for biking, kayaking, jogging, etc. We have specifically spent time and money exploring ways to activate the North Branch Canal on Goose Island’s east side, which was man-made in the 1850s.

How many people could we one day see working in these new developments at Goose Island? What about Goose Island and the Lincoln Park industrial corridor that includes the old Finkl and Gutmann sites?

It’s one of the only opportunities to build horizontal office campuses in the city in a core location. It has fundamentally changed cities like Seattle that have many urban corporate campuses—Amazon, Facebook, and Starbucks for example. It is the best of both worlds, a campus environment without having to leave the city. And the most amazing part is access to the riverfront.

We have a handful of opportunities for companies to have private riverfront campus settings within a mile of the central business district. These are limited opportunities. In 10 years, we think people will say something like "Wow, that was so obvious. Why wouldn’t you want to be on the river in this location?" And it will continue to push further north as more companies look to create that environment. It’s a truly historic opportunity, and we think the first movers—like CH Robinson at Finkl—are making moves that will pay huge dividends for recruiting, culture and growth way into the future. These things represent a unique, irreplaceable, and defensible competitive advantage to have a corporate campus on the North Branch of the Chicago River this close to downtown. Companies are beginning to recognize this, that the new North Branch can and will be a larger economic growth engine than the old industrial corridor, bringing tens of thousands of jobs to Chicago.

The North Branch is an incredible asset that runs directly through some of the most desirable neighborhoods in Chicago. The mayor and the Department of Planning and Development recognize this. Talented young employees want to be here. Leading companies can and will continue to invest and relocate here. The North Branch has had a long history as a growth engine for the city, and this history will only continue.