Reducing the amount of incentives will help better fund schools and police, Haas said, but he added he is open to allowing some residential abatements to help boost population.

“If you have low crime and good schools, then sports teams and businesses should be falling all over themselves to come here without subsidies,” he said.

Candidates also want to sell more of the roughly 12,000 city-owned vacant lots and abandoned buildings to small developers, with a focus on the North Side.

Incentives can only be offered when developers propose a project, which is why the in-demand central corridor has attracted the bulk of them. But Alderman Antonio French, 21st Ward, pointed to swaths of city-owned land on the North and South sides that could be marketed to developers. Generous incentive packages could be dangled to start projects there.

“Obviously, the city can create great incentives and actually go out on a limb to do projects that are high priority,” he said.

Alderman Jeffrey Boyd, 22nd Ward, agrees that the mayor’s office and SLDC can do more to gin up interest in areas outside the central corridor: “If you have real leadership, you steer them into the neighborhoods that need it the most.”

Developing plans