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If you need more evidence of how badly downtown Chicago is struggling to recover from the pandemic, look no further than two recent pieces of news.

The first wasn’t surprising. The office vacancy rate downtown hit a record 28% in the third quarter, according to data from real estate firm CBRE. Nearly three of every 10 square feet of office space in the central business district is going unleased right now. Brutal.

But the second was a jolt. Walgreens, now owned by a New York private equity firm, said Monday that it’s departing its 200,000 square foot space at the Old Post Office, the massive building straddling the Eisenhower Expressway, which serves as a gateway to downtown from the west. The pharmacy chain will relocate an undisclosed number of workers — at one point, there were 1,800 in the Old Post Office space — to its Deerfield headquarters by the end of January.

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