McDonald’s Return to Chicago Defies City’s Financial Troubles
- World’s largest fast-food chain joins company moves to Chicago
- Violence, pension woes no obstacle to pursuit of millennials
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The number of Chicagoans murdered this year is up more than 50 percent. Pension debt tops $20 billion, and taxes are soaring. Illinois’s governor calls the city’s government corrupt and its financially teetering schools “crumbling prisons.”
Yet McDonald’s Corp. is moving its headquarters from a sprawling, leafy campus in suburban Oak Brook to a spot just a couple of miles from one of the city’s most violent neighborhoods. The world’s largest fast-food chain is joining a parade of companies creating an island of prosperity amid urban dysfunction.