The Future of Chicagoland: Quantum Tech, Data Centers, Transit, and Regional Growth with CMAP’s Kyle Schulz

Aaron Masliansky (00:01)
Welcome to the Chicagoland Guide and I'm your host, Aaron Masliansky Today we are here with Kyle Schulz and Kyle is from CMAP. He is the Director of Strategic Advancement. CMAP is the Chicago Metropolitan Area Planning ⁓ Association and they do all different types of regional planning efforts throughout the Chicagoland area. And I met Kyle recently at a Chicago Association of Realtors Global Real Estate Council event that we had and

You were really engaging. There's so much going on in the Chicagoland area. Mike, you are the perfect guest for this podcast. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (00:42)
Not a problem. Thank you for having me on and really I appreciate you setting the bar for this conversation way up here at like the top of the pedestal. No pressure at all.

Aaron Masliansky (00:48)
You

No, no pressure at all. So you better perform. But it's great to have you on. know, Chicago has been in the news so much for so many different things over this past year. ⁓ Good, bad, ugly, whatever. ⁓ the coolest thing that I think is going on Chicago right now is the Chicago Bears. And we are winning. We are top in the division. Can you believe it?

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (00:55)
Yeah.

No, I cannot believe that we're eight and three, top of the division and Thanksgiving week, especially when you think about a year ago, how we fired for the first time in season a coach to now fast forward, really just goes to show what competent coaching and like good instruction can do for a football team.

Aaron Masliansky (01:39)
It does. It shows you what kind of improvement you can have when you have the right systems in place. And I think that's just awesome.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (01:46)
The part that I'm excited about too, because I am a pessimistic Chicago fan, ⁓ my wife during the Bengals game came downstairs from taking an afternoon nap and I was freaking out and she's like, they have this one, they're up 14, why are you scared? I'm like, because I'm a Chicago fan and they're going to somehow lose this. They nearly did, but the part that gives me encouragement is Caleb Williams, while it's inconsistent,

still is leading a top five offense producing 21 plus points almost every game. Think about what next year is going to be like when he's had a full year in the system, a full offseason under bed. Like this feels like the start of a like golden era of Bears football. And hopefully because in my 38 years of life, I've never had that. I missed the joys of 85 and the 86 Super Bowl. I've just lived in like one off random years that don't make sense.

Aaron Masliansky (02:41)
Exactly. Or when they went to the Super Bowl and they started off great and then they ended. Not so great.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (02:47)
I

think my friends and I were talking over the weekend there were like three falls in our lifetime in which there's been a happy bear season. ⁓ 05, 18 and maybe like 98 are the three and it's just like wow we've lived not a lot of life but enough that we have enough falls and like it's sad to be a bear sad. Not this fall, not this fall though.

Aaron Masliansky (03:02)
Yeah.

It can be, we're well trained. know

what can happen. And the Bears, it's a great thing to be able to show off to the rest of world. We have a good sports team right now and let's hope it keeps going. And I definitely want to talk about the Bears because they're a big part of what the Chicagoland area is. And they have a big decision about what they're going to be doing about their stadium and how that affects the whole region. So I feel like.

You're the perfect person to talk about this and the different types of opportunities and things like that that are coming about through the Chicagoland area. And that's what I really want people to learn about ⁓ from this conversation about what is happening and what are the catalysts and things that we can have this wide view of what the Chicagoland region is and can be.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (04:03)
Cool, yeah, I think when you put in perspective what has made Chicago special, especially on like a global stage, it often is our culture and our sports. I often in my previous job talked about when you talk to folks nationally, internationally, the number one association that they have with Chicago is Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Sports is that great

platform that allows the Chicago story to break through. And we haven't always had that the last decade or so. We had the Cubs and for a little bit in time, they broke through, but not the way that like a think back to the 80s and 90s and like SNL is the great satirist of our country. Had all those spoofs about Chicago and the Bears and Peyton and Jordan and the Bulls. I think when you think about where we're at as Chicagoland right now, you've got the Bears being successful.

the bulls, but then also think culturally, right? A year ago, we hosted a major political parties convention and the spotlight for a week was on Chicago and how beautiful our city looked or how when you turn on the TV, one of the most popular and successful TV shows is the bear, which features Chicago's love of restaurants and culinary cuisine. And so we've got a great marketing happening for us externally.

even though there are some folks that want to put additional pressures and ⁓ put us down.

Aaron Masliansky (05:29)
Right. It is always complicated. But I think that's like the challenge of being in a great large city. you you are in charge of strategic advancement. for the whole region, and I feel like these types of things are right in your wheelhouse. Tell us a little bit about what you do in that role. And you know what C-MAP does.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (05:53)
Yeah, awesome. Thank you for giving me the bridge to who is CMAP and what we do. So for the audience, CMAP is Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. We have a dual mandate. We are both a federal agency and a state agency. Our federal mandate is to work with the Illinois Department of Transportation and the 284 municipalities in Chicagoland to program where the federal transportation money will go.

what projects, whether it's new roads, new bridges, new bike lanes, will be built, and then how much of that federal money that we get will be spent on those projects. So we have a really influential role when you think about moving Chicagoland, whether it's our freight system, whether it's our people.

and making sure that the federal money we get is distributed equitably and with everyone at the table. Our state mandate says if you're going to plan roads and transportation systems, you might want to know what the long range future of Chicago Land looks like.

And so we essentially are the Daniel Burnhams for anyone who knows the Burnham plan and the make no little plans mantra that is in everyone genetics in Chicago. We do the long range plan to think about where Chicago is going to be by 2050, by 2060 and how our economy, how our people, how our housing will all intersect with our roads and our transit system. And when we think about transit as a CMAP, we really think that is the heart in which our entire economy

me and our entire brand really pushes out from right when Chicago was originally built east met west west met east right here in Chicago through the railroads. Today we have the world's most connected airport in O'Hare. We have Midway that also allows additional access to other markets. So we really value our transit system and the role that that plays. As we look ahead, we are in the process of thinking what will Chicago land look like by 2060?

Aaron Masliansky (07:38)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (07:58)
And as we think about that, we are starting to say, okay, what impact does climate have? What impact does all this adoption of new advanced technologies have on our economy? Where are people going to live? And we're starting to position and think through how do we make sure that Chicago has precise investment, equitable investment, and is ensuring that everyone has a stake in this success of our region?

Aaron Masliansky (08:24)
Yeah, and that's not an easy feat. I mean, how do you figure out where we're going to be in 30 years or longer? And one of the things I look at is, okay, we have a lot of times people look at the current and the way that human psychology works is what is now will be. But you start to look at things like robotics, autonomous vehicles, you have big investments in, in robotic

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (08:30)
Thank

Aaron Masliansky (08:52)
airplanes, but more so from going from downtown to airports and things like that. United Airlines is investing heavily in this type of ⁓ product or vehicle, I should say. And that kind of changes where you may think things go. Are there going to be big skyports in downtown? Is there a need for very high, for the skyscraper like we have now? then you look at everything that changed through COVID where

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (09:11)
Thanks for watching.

Aaron Masliansky (09:22)
where transportation patterns changed. So how do you figure that out? How do you factor that in?

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (09:27)
Yeah,

it's a two year journey. ⁓ We earlier this month of November kicked off that process by having 900 people from around the region of Chicago come together and just start to talk to us about what are some themes that they would like to see when they think about the future of Chicago land? How do they think about their land use? What do we think about water? Housing. And through that process, through that evening of just kind of intentional networking,

we begin to identify some of those themes. And over the course of 2026 and into 2027, we'll be convening stakeholders in every format, large group settings, individual round tables, policymakers, foundation leaders, business sector, to share what we're seeing, to talk about what data we have. Because CMAP, we really think one of our strongest advantages is that we are the data library for Chicago.

We're seeing what's happening in real time. We're forecasting out what we expect to happen 20, 30 years from now. We are able to help create data-driven insights for everyone that calls this beautiful area home. We're going to take that data and we're going to make sure that we're matching that up with the lived existence and the aspirations of everyone in Chicagoland. ⁓ Doing it uniquely this time around themes of, hey, what do we think our housing needs to be?

How do we think our water supply needs to be managed in the future? Where do we think there's gonna be jobs? Love that you called out the EVA toll, that electric vehicle transportation play, because that's infrastructure for the 22nd century, right? That's not something that's abundantly available today for anyone, but thanks to United and their investments in groups like Archer Aviation, there are now probably gonna be helipads set up around the region to quickly put people into O'Hare and to get them to United's...

Aaron Masliansky (11:06)
Sure.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (11:22)
stations. So like these are all really exciting concepts that we hope that over the next two years listeners of this program will reach out to me and say hey I want to be part of this. I want to share my experiences. I want to be part of this because I have invested interest in the success of Chicago.

Aaron Masliansky (11:40)
Yeah, I think for me personally, I would like to be involved in this because I feel like from my perspective and the housing markets and everything else, there's a lot to share and a lot that you see on the ground. So I think that that's so helpful to get all these different stakeholders at the table.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (11:58)
The housing piece especially, When prior to joining CMAP, I was the chief growth officer for the regional economic development agency, World Business Chicago. And one of our strongest advantages is that we have talent. Businesses around the world recognize Chicago for our people.

They're highly educated. They have diversity of experiences and cultures which make the workplace better. And so as we think about, or at least for me, as I think about the next 30, 40 years, it's where are people going to live?

When housing has become this crisis, affordability, access, and it's all kind of messed in on each other, how do we ensure that we still have housing so that we still have people that want to live and can live here with the jobs we provide and don't have them go to other greener pastures because they think that's where the housing exists? And so to me, your experience in the housing world, those insights you're seeing, those joys and pains is going to be really helpful because that to me

is a key area that we need to come together, all of us, realtors, business leaders, workers, policymakers, philanthropy, to come and figure out how do we do this to ensure we have abundant housing stock.

Aaron Masliansky (13:13)
Yeah, that is the key question. And it's not just in the United States or just Chicago, it's globally where people are trying to figure this out. One of the interesting ideas is this organization called Strong Towns, where they talk a lot about like the missing middle and where you used to have more mom and pop type of real estate developers that would come in and build duplexes or townhouses or smaller condo apartment buildings that

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (13:22)
Yeah.

Aaron Masliansky (13:42)
are affordable and that don't require institutional level expertise in order to get going. And those people may have then become that at some point, but it levels the playing field and you create more supply. You can then lower the pricing of what things cost.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (14:00)
Yeah, and working with groups that are in that Missy Lane Middle space has been one of those preparation spaces we've been in as we've launched for this next long range plan. We're calling the next long range plan the Century Plan because I like to think about it, what is the Chicago land going to look like as we approach the next turn of the century?

when I am closer to the end of my days, but my kids are in their prime, I have a six year old and an 18 month old, what is that Chicago land going to be like for them? That gives them the same sense of civic pride that I have. ⁓ Because I know I can't trust my daughter to carry on for the Bears. She'll openly roots against them. ⁓ Working with one of the areas where I think CMAP is a powerful resource for anybody listening is like, let's convene.

Aaron Masliansky (14:39)
⁓ man.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (14:52)
make sure we have the right people on this table. And when I look at Chicago, we've got a lot of land parcels that are in that infill category, that if they had somebody who had expertise in developing that missing middle, could we not help address our population decline?

by having some more affordable middle value homes. So we're already starting to work with groups like that and understand that space a little bit better so that as we go into next year, we can have really intelligent and informed decisions that anyone can grab onto.

Aaron Masliansky (15:23)
Well, that's great. And one of the things I think that we have to figure out as time goes on, what are the jobs? And, I have a 15 year old and a 13 year old, so they're a little bit closer to going to college and at this point, and it's really hard to help guide them on what do you want to do for a living? Because you have AI that is doing so much or we're at the nascent stage of AI, but we could just see the potential of it.

We have a huge quantum facility that is going to be built in the old US Steel South Shore campus that I definitely want to talk with you about and learn more about. So you have all these different kinds of things. Downtown Chicago office jobs have changed since COVID. We talk about there's, are some projects that are being redeveloped as residential that were old office buildings. And then you look at things like throughout the suburbs, older

buildings like that, that maybe they become campuses for more housing or things of that nature. What are your thoughts on that? It's a lot.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (16:30)
⁓

That was a lot. I will table the quantum piece right now. We can dive in there more. But I'm glad you framed it around the, especially as like a father, the uncertainty of what that job market is going to look like. Because anyone listen to read a business podcast about the state of where these companies are.

Probably in the next five years, the jobs are gonna change over and we're gonna have whole new industry that we didn't know existed because of how fast technology is going. One of the considerations that is constantly at the front of my mind when we're talking about these plans is just weighing and making sure we're thoughtful towards the impact of technology, right? Some of this has to do with, do we have jobs that maybe are not equipped for the 21st century?

and require more automation and productivity to fill those. And so some manufacturing facilities that used to have 200 people now have 20 because it's more efficient and productive to have machines do a lot of that work and be competitive on a global stage, right? When you are competing, not just with businesses in the suburbs of Chicago or in Indiana, but in Mexico and Thailand, ⁓ the AI revolution that is happening on our shores right now.

What do those jobs look like and how do they put food on our tables? That is a question that we are still trying to get our arms around because there is so much.

uncertainty there. But one thing that I do think is really promising is Chicagoland continues to be a destination for business investment, whether it is an incumbent industry that has existed for 150 years and is seeing market opportunity to expand, or its new industry that wants to bet its innovative future on an operation in Chicago. ⁓ Chicagoland, one of the key metrics that the

kind of the economic development world tracks is this phrase called pro Chicago decisions. We actually this past month, beginning of November, passed the total number of pro Chicago decisions we had for all of last year. And we are on path to challenge our best year of 2023 by the end of this year. So we continue to have a place where companies want to invest and create jobs for Chicagoans, even while we're facing all this uncertainty.

Aaron Masliansky (19:00)
Yeah. I think that's really helpful. And you're right. We're not just competing with other cities here in the United States. Like today I was reading in the Wall Street Journal about how China is really focusing on robotics and they have these dark plants where basically there's maybe a couple of lights on because just robots working the facility and maybe a couple of people monitoring it once every hour, once every half hour. And

It's a real question of how do we compete on that? And then you talk about things like where there's all these data centers and those are, you know, growing rapidly throughout the United States. And that takes a lot of energy infrastructure in order to be able to support that. And at the same time, you talk about Chicago being a destination and I read about things where people are talking about just they're being ubiquitous wealth.

Like it's almost like a utopian idea, like, you know, you hear like Elon Musk talking about that where people just won't need to work because there's going to just be so much money that's created, generated by AI and robotics. So it's like, what do people do? I mean, these are existential questions, but the fact that Chicago is this destination, maybe that is the way that we should be thinking about it. It's the entertainment, it's the culture, it's all those different types of things that bring people here.

I mean, it's another way of thinking about what the future holds.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (20:28)
Yeah, there's two really cool parts of that overview and how you're thinking about this. One, the part that I feel confident celebrating, promoting Chicagoland is in a global economy that is based on knowledge, innovation. We pound for pound can go against any other market. When you think about how Chicagoland has three tier when you research universities.

Northwestern University, University of Illinois, Chicago, and University of Chicago. Then you have all of those other liberal arts colleges that are in the area, other institutions of notoriety like DePaul, Loyola, Rosalind Franklin up in Lake County. But then also anchoring those are we have two national laboratories, right, that are the leaders in energy storage and energy distribution. ⁓

I'm not sure if this is 100 % accurate, but when I used to work with one of those national labs, they would say it was their research that helped make Elon a billionaire in inventing the battery storage system that makes the Tesla run as it is today. And so like we have that knowledge, we have that brain power. And then if you take just ⁓ a 30,000 foot view outside of Chicago itself, we're sitting

in a five-hour drive of nearly 500,000 university students that are going to school in towns like Bloomington, West Lafayette, Iowa City, Madison, where they aspire to have the global lifestyle and career opportunities that Chicago offers.

So I think I feel confident because yes, China has the ability with some of its state-sponsored capitalism to do things that we can't do here, but we also have an innovative economy that's a magnet for the best minds in the world. And that feels like a good segue for the quantum opportunity. let me talk because I think when we've looked at this year, one of the areas you see tremendous growth and opportunity is that experiential

Aaron Masliansky (22:29)
Yes.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (22:41)
hospitality economy, right? In June, we announced that Universal Studios ⁓ parks, you know, if you fly to Orlando and go to the Harry Potter world, that same division is opening up a park in the River West neighborhood of Chicago in 2027 to take advantage of the Midwest, our population of Chicago, the discretionary money that you spoke about, like.

A real global player in the entertainment economy said yes to Chicago. You saw Harry Potter open up their experiential center on the mag mile. The Starbucks Roastery continues to be one of the highest performing, most visited stores in the Starbucks network. We have that experiential magnetism because we're the center of the Midwest and nearly 25 % of the US GDP is in this region.

Aaron Masliansky (23:38)
Yeah, it's really incredible. And ⁓ to add on to the university students, I was at a talk at Evanston High School for my son, and there was an author who came in who's an expert on colleges. And he was talking about how most students stay within a five hour radius of where they go to college. And so the fact that we have so much concentration of university students

within the Chicago region is such a huge value add and positive for what can be because you need that high level expertise in order to be able to grow. And even on top of what you're talking about with ⁓ what's going on with Universal, what's going on around the United Center. I mean,

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (24:32)
Yes.

Aaron Masliansky (24:33)
You look at like the West loop and how that has grown. And I remember going to the Bulls games in the nineties as a kid, and there were just parking lots and you go in, you get out and it is so different. And what they are talking about developing there is just a whole nother city within the city.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (24:54)
Well, I mean, in the same spirit of city within a city, go down to the 78 at Roosevelt and Clark, right? And Joe Mancuedo saying, I'm going to take this large parcel of land and put the permanent dedicated home to the Chicago Fire Football Club here. And the reason it was called the 78 is because the developers aspired for it to be the 78th community area for Chicago.

And so now you have an anchor tenant, which will attract a global audience because football or soccer is the world's sport to that part of Chicago. You've got Wrigleyville and all of the forward thinking vision that Ricketts family had to turn that into a place that was family friendly. I do have kind of traditional Cubs fans who prefer some of the more gritty aspects of Wrigleyville, but as a father who is trying to convince his six year old to be a Cubs fan,

Aaron Masliansky (25:43)
you

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (25:50)
It's a much more enjoyable experience to take her there. And so you see those type of developments, 1901, the 78, Wrigleyville, the continued evolution of Fulton Market, or now what we hope is going to happen with Google anchoring the loop and purchasing the Thompson Center, redevelopment of the loop. in the spirit of what you said a few minutes ago,

the conversion of some of those legacy commercial office buildings into more of a mixed use play that will ultimately embody some of the vibe and experience you get when you're over in Fulton Market. That energy and that density and that spirit that I think we all relate to when we go out, whether it's for work or for play.

Aaron Masliansky (26:35)
Absolutely. And you could just see like how things have changed over the years. know, one, I used to work for a real estate developer and we worked on a project at Harrison and Wells and that was a parking lot and across the street was a big empty piece of grass that was the end of a terminal for a train line a hundred years ago. ⁓ And nothing had been built there for a while. And now there's just apartments, condos, everything all built in that area. It's built up.

basically goes all the way to where the 78 is going to be. It's just like this redevelopment opportunity that exists in some of these areas that are close to the core, I think is also what gives so much potential to Chicago and so many open lots. So not a lot of cities have that. And I think that that gives us kind of a runway to go. And then you talk about what are the future jobs mentioned quantum. So that is something that

It's kind of nebulous. Not everybody even knows what it means. It's science fiction and it's like, numbers are here and there and molecules are in every place. You know, if you know anything about it and then you hear about it being talked about like for quantum security or things like that. And quantum goes with crypto. Like what, what is quantum and why, why do we care?

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (27:35)
It's science fiction. It's science fiction.

Okay, before I answer this, I'm going to qualify this entire response to, am not a quantum physicist. ⁓ I could barely get through basic math and science in high school. ⁓ I did have the fortune though in my previous job to work with probably the proudest, most Chicagoland, Illinois collection of leadership.

Aaron Masliansky (28:07)
you

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (28:21)
where for Quantum to secure the future of the Quantum industry in this market, governor's office, the Cook County president's office, regional elected officials and economic development leaders, and the mayor all came together and said, we are going to make sure that this happens in Chicago. So I got to be on the front lines of helping to make this Quantum conversation a reality for Chicagoland. So that's the qualifier. I did.

have to explain to people what quantum was. ⁓ And to do that, I started off with what is quantum for high schoolers? That made no sense. What is quantum for middle schooler? That made no sense. Fifth grade, nothing, second grade, ultimately I found a video that is what is quantum for kindergartners? And that kind of clicked. Well, the analogy for everyone is think about a coin, a quarter, with George Washington's face in the equal.

Aaron Masliansky (29:10)
Thank

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (29:19)
If you think about that coin and those two sides as a traditional computer, there's a kind of binary option. One is the head, the zero is the eagle, and the computer does math and programming with ones and zeros. A quantum computer takes that same quarter and allows it to be flipped, spin, jump, be turned over, flipped inside out. It allows for every possible computation to be explored at light speed.

That's the part that makes this really promising. And so when you hear people talk about quantum and crypto or quantum and healthcare, they are speaking about the promise that quantum has to unlock and help us solve some of the greatest problems our society is facing or will face. It is still very much in the early days. I was listening to a competitor's podcast of yours last week ⁓ with the CEO of Google talking about

Aaron Masliansky (30:14)
Thanks

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (30:18)
how Google was investing in Quantum at the same time they were trying to come out ahead in this AI race. And the CEO of Google basically said Quantum is today where AI was at seven to 10 years ago. So it's still very much in the early dawn hours of being a economically beneficial economy for most people. That's not to say it's not gonna get there and it's probably gonna get there really quick. Where it's important for Chicagoland

Aaron Masliansky (30:41)
Yeah.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (30:47)
is when you go back 60 or 70 years ago, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was producing the world's leaders in engineering silicon. All of that brain, all that expertise found its way out to Silicon Valley. And so while San Francisco is now associated with all things tech, those roots are all in this market. They're all from Chicagoland and Illinois. And so to avoid that from happening, there's been this tremendous investment to stand up a quantum park

in the South Chicago neighborhood at a former US steel mill site. The part that I'm excited about is that steel mill produced the steel that is the frame of the X's of the John Hancock Tower. It's the steel that is the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, but it had been shuttered and abandoned and vacant and kind of a reminder of the loss of industry for the last 30 years. It'll now be the promise of what quantum can be for the world.

as we begin to build out this campus and its potential. Actually, and it just started, we broke ground in October. So it's coming, ⁓ it'll be here. The part that made it economically viable for me, because if your listeners know anything about South Chicago and can make the connection to the steel mill, that is blue collar central. That was the economic industrial heart of the Midwest when it was at its prime and there were 50,000 people working for that steel mill.

Aaron Masliansky (31:55)
Awesome.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (32:15)
For quantum to reach where it's going to go, they're going to need to test their theories and they are going to need a large amount of manufactured material to support their quantum computations and quantum computing aspirations. So while we may think of it as science fiction, it has a very much industrial application today to get us to that future. And that to me is where I'm most excited is it'll take Chicago's industrial know-how, pair it with our love of innovation and disruption.

and kind of be the anchor seat for this future economy.

Aaron Masliansky (32:50)
Yeah, that's amazing. And I'm glad it broke ground because I remember ⁓ being at an American Planning Association conference in 2004 in Chicago and getting a tour of it, of what was going to be then. So the fact that something is actually happening now is momentum in itself. are there going to be like, who are the people that would work there? Data scientists? Like, what are you talking about with the material that they would need to use to test things on?

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (33:18)
Yeah, so there is going to be the folks that have advanced degrees, know, PhDs in quantum physics, quantum mechanics. Those will be there and kind of the largest workforce to start. But as this campus gets built out and it's 125 acres and you've already seen what a state, county, city, region declaring that they want to win quantum can do because you've attracted the likes of IBM.

to have their national quantum algorithm center be located in Chicago when this is opened. You've got multiple international startups saying they want to be in Chicago, French, Australian, saying they're going to come here. Ultimately, there becomes a very kind of traditional quote blue collar, unquote job with maintenance technicians and managers of the programming system. And one of the things that's really exciting

to think about the intentionality here is the work that everyone associated with this is doing to connect local elementary and local high schoolers and their parents to understanding what the future of this industry will be and what skill sets they need to have to be ready to work on that campus.

Aaron Masliansky (34:36)
That's huge. mean, that spills over to every school in the region. And you talked about different countries who want to set up in companies that want to set up here because of quantum. And that brings up an interesting aspect of foreign direct investment and how Chicago positions itself as an FDI leader in the United States. So will that help us compete in the next 50 years because of that? I mean, do you see...

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (34:44)
Enjoy.

Aaron Masliansky (35:05)
massive amounts of capital inflow into the Chicagoland area because of that?

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (35:10)
Yes, I think having this anchor that has got public buy-in and has real industry momentum behind it as serving as a global catalyst. The week that the campus was announced, July of 2024, within five days time, we had six countries and their consulates reach out to us and ask if we could host and receive a delegation from their home country to learn more about Guantanamo.

Aaron Masliansky (35:40)
Wow.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (35:41)
It has the ability for us to finally break through globally in an area of expertise. When we think about foreign direct investment for this region, it's actually a really, we're really competitive in attracting foreign companies. Our challenges.

Chicagoland is not known for anything, with the exception that most people know Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. It's amazing how far and wide and deep that legacy has spread. But when you talk to a foreign company, they think of New York for two reasons. The financial center of the United States and because it's really on every piece of cultural export we make. Every TV show that is beloved is usually set in New York City. ⁓

Aaron Masliansky (36:11)
Right.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (36:30)
San Francisco is the tech hub. So when companies think about being tech innovative, they think of San Francisco first. LA has the Hollywood vibe in the stars. What plays to Chicago's advantage is two things. Those three cities are on the coast.

which make it really difficult to do international business, especially if your home office is multiple hours ahead of you. Chicago is strategically positioned in the middle of the country, allowing you to do business with both the Asian market and the European Middle Eastern market in the same day. The second part, which makes us really compelling, is that we have a nearly $1 trillion economy as a region, 21st largest in the world.

Aaron Masliansky (36:53)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (37:15)
What makes that interesting is that no one sector makes up more than 15 % of that total GDP. So we're diverse. That diversity can be a hindrance because nobody knows this for anything.

But when you're a foreign company and you're looking to try to set up stakes in the USA, build your brand, build a customer base, we allow a very easy market to penetrate and test out pivots if they need to be done, find a customer base, especially when you think of using O'Hare, using our highways and railways to get to other markets. So we have historically been one of the most competitively attractive places in the United States for foreign direct investment.

Aaron Masliansky (37:57)
Yeah, I, and I see that. And I think that one of the real reasons why people are here is because we have such a diverse population. So if you're coming from say, ⁓ Lithuania and you really, yeah.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (38:12)
That was my go-to. That was the one I was going to bring up because everyone thinks about Poland, right? How

many Chicagoans were raised with Chicago has more Poles anywhere outside of Poland, right? But continue with your thought. But Lithuania also is in that same spirit.

Aaron Masliansky (38:24)
Right.

But Lithuania is in the same spirit and there's a big community here. And I've gotten to meet people through different events that I've gone to for different organizations in the area. And you can see that like, okay, you get here, you get set up and then you have other, you have companies already here. have, you have. ⁓

maybe family, friends, and that helps you set up language. One thing that I'd love to do is I'm really into aviation. I thought I was going to be a pilot when I first went into college and that didn't end up happening, but all good. Still love airplanes, but I like to look up at the sky and look to see which planes are coming in. And I'll look on the flight tracker app and you, and what's the coolest thing is where you see that these planes are coming from all over the world. And

like you name it, that plane is coming from there. And it's just the coolest thing because you see the convergence on Chicago and like how connected we are. And I think that that is such a huge thing. And when you look at like, okay, we're not known for one industry ⁓ because we've adapted and changed over time. I mean, we were the slaughterhouse capital of the world and you know, where all the commodities were traded and everything else.

We don't need to be the slaughterhouse capital now. We could do other types of things. And I think it's, we have the natural resources with water that not everybody does. We have the transportation and if we have quantum going and who knows what with AI and how that changes things with so many well-educated people, like we have tremendous potential.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (40:04)
The one part I'll add is, I can already imagine my text being filled up, we are known for food, food, food innovation. Like when you take a step back and think about what makes us special, the fact that you're home to McDonald's global headquarters, Mondalese's global headquarters, Mars Wrigley, Kraft Times, ⁓ I'm forgetting several, several more, that

Aaron Masliansky (40:14)
Yes.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (40:33)
density of brain power, innovation, market insight, coupled with the fact that for most of Chicago, and we're in the breadbasket, right? We are producing the corn, the bean, the cattle that the rest of the world needs. We have seen innovation happen in that space, but that's just for me to cover my backside and make sure don't get.

angry text about how could you ignore this important sector that is really attractive for anyone nationally, internationally who come here. But yeah, your spirit's right. What's going to happen with quantum? How is AI and quantum going to emerge? The part that's really exciting about the quantum park on the south side is not just quantum, it's also microelectronics, right? It's those semiconductor pieces that are going to help propel the quantum computation faster. So

Like it is really interesting to sit here in 2025 and feel slightly uneasy about the world, right? Like there are any number of headwinds that we could name. There's any number of reasons to feel apprehensive about the future. But then when you start to have like play this conversation back and realize there's a lot of good and I'm gonna live in a world of instability and uncertainty.

Really appreciative that I'm doing so from Chicagoland, where there is so much good and there is that kind of deep civic commitment that we all want to see this neighborhood, this community prosper.

Aaron Masliansky (42:05)
Absolutely. mean, and Chicago has definitely been the news a lot this year. There's been a lot going on from the federal administration, from the Trump administration, ⁓ focused on Chicago because of our politics or immigration and ⁓ really trying to slow us down a bit. it's, I think it's important that we keep our chin up and really truly appreciate what we have going because we are

incredibly important to this country and to the world. And we have a lot that we offer and provide.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (42:41)
Yeah, it's, I like when you started off the beginning of this conversation talking about the good, the bad and the ugly because for most of the fall, I feel like all the attention Chicago had was ugly, right? And I had a bunch of friends text me and be like, wow, Chicago looks like a hellhole. And they'd send me a picture of whatever news source they were watching. It's like, that's not from Chicago. That's from some other city. Like we, you've seen our city, you know how

Aaron Masliansky (42:47)
Yep.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (43:10)
beautiful it can be and that's one of the parts that I hope we all appreciate is how beautiful this entire region is. The number of times I would host a foreign company on their first visit to Chicago and they would be stunned by the beauty, that mixture of outdoor

and urban, right? City and land coming together and being perfectly planned or how it felt like a big city without the overwhelming density of a Tokyo or a London or a New York City.

or how there is in this community a space for every lifestyle. That if you want that dense urban 15 minute commute, you have that. If you want something with a little more land and that kind of typical suburban lifestyle that made America middle class what it was, we have that. Or if you want to be disconnected and unplugged.

There's countryside and rural estates that you can find. We have something for every lifestyle and every aspiration that your family has, which not a lot of markets can offer that, especially with so close to a major airport or major professional sports teams.

Aaron Masliansky (44:25)
Absolutely. Yeah, it's one of my favorite things too, when I help clients who are coming moving from somewhere outside Chicago, whether it be in the United States or moving from somewhere outside the world and being able to give them a tour. Like I love being a tour guide. One of my favorite work experiences as a real estate agent was I had a client who moved from California and he was in town for two days and he wanted to buy a condo in the city and ⁓

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (44:38)
Yeah.

Aaron Masliansky (44:54)
I know, he had a huge list. had 38 places to see in two days. I've never shown so many properties at once, but I'm like, all right, we're gonna do it. I'm like, can't you narrow it down?

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (45:02)
How do you keep them

straight? Like 38 over two days, they're just the same, aren't they?

Aaron Masliansky (45:05)
It was hard.

A lot of them, mean, some places we go to the one building and there's like three, four condos to see at once. So, okay, so there's, there's, knock them out. But at first I was like anxious about it, but then I'm like, no, this is awesome. And I made a list. made an itinerary. I got it all scheduled. I took the train downtown. I met them there. walked everywhere. We saw everything. We went on the rooftops of these buildings, some of them, you know, right at the river and the lake and.

It was so much fun because I got to see it from his viewpoint as well. And you get to just realize like how awesome this city is. I think that like everyone needs to do that once in while. Be a tourist here.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (45:54)
Yes. Do you have a favorite tourist spot? So like for that guess, like what were the fun lifestyle spaces you would like took him to or would take him to?

Aaron Masliansky (46:06)
⁓ man. mean, there's so many, mean, Millennium Park, think is number one. And because it, and that was just like a rail yard for so many years growing up. was nothing. It was just always talked about. And then it is this beautiful jewel in Chicago now. ⁓ so I think that going to Millennium Park gives you a great perspective. If you can get up at the top of the Sears tower, that is a great place to be able to see everything at night. I love the Hancock.

Going by Michigan Avenue, I think that that's beautiful. ⁓ The lakefront where you can go on to ⁓ even like Montrose Harbor or any of those areas up there, I think are just outstanding. I mean, there's so many areas, but then you get to the burbs and there's different places there that you can see. It's kind of endless.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (47:01)
I, are my family's thing is parks. ⁓ My six year old and I decided we were going to do as many Chicago parks as possible. ⁓ Mainly so I didn't have to watch like Bluey all day, every day ⁓ for hours on end, which like, I recognize that I'm pretty fortunate because that's a tolerable show. ⁓ And we started to do Chicago parks. And then my wife would send me parks in the suburbs.

Aaron Masliansky (47:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (47:30)
And some of those are just like, they floor you. Because you're so fortunate that they're just 30, 40 minutes away. And I live in the northwest side of the city. So some of them are down in the south suburbs. And it's just like, these are incredible. And they take, my daughter doesn't want to leave. there for two hours. And she's happy as can be. So the parks are truly one of the greatest assets we have. And anytime someone talks about Millennium Park.

Aaron Masliansky (47:34)
Yeah.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (48:00)
I had a chance this summer, I got to be a stay at home dad for a few weeks ⁓ and stay with my 18 month old son who loves water. Any place where there could be water, he will try to crawl in. But I took him to Crowne Plaza, best afternoon, we splashed in the water, we sat under the trees, there was a band playing and it's just one of those things being like, I'm in a beautiful location with a safe city.

Aaron Masliansky (48:07)
Yeah.

you

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (48:27)
with the sounds of like the city humming around me. This is my life, how do I get so lucky? And just like my little boys, pure delight with being able to go splash until he was soaked to the bone.

Aaron Masliansky (48:40)
It's amazing. I mean, and that's like part of the greatness of planning for the future. You know, if you look at the Burnham plan and all the connected parks and everything else, if they wouldn't have done it then we would never have had it because all that would have been developed. And you look at the architecture that we have and the beautiful architecture and the leaders in architecture that have been here ⁓ for over a century. And you have the Frank Lloyd Wright studio and Oak Park and all that.

There's so much and you talk about it with your kids when my kids were really young, my wife would be working Sunday mornings tutoring and I would have them and I'm like, I gotta do something with them. And we would go to, we'd go to the Sears Tower, we'd go to museum of science industry, we'd go to all these different places because they had never seen it before. And it's like, it's, it is so awesome that we have that.

And, you know, one of the things about Chicago we started this conversation with is the Bears. And this, this is more of a tougher question for you, but where Soldier Field is, is absolutely stunning. It is just the, the most beautiful location, I think for football in the NFL, but there definitely is a lot of talk about the Bears moving to the site that they bought the old Arlington racetrack in Arlington Heights. What do you think is going to happen?

And how does that change Chicagoland?

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (50:07)
That is a really, I think, important impactful question, especially when you think about brand identity, when you think about land use, transportation, all the things that kind of are core to both my personal life, my fandom, and my professional world. I do think the Bears truly love when the game starts and...

whether whatever TV announcer says live from the Chicago lakefront, it's the Chicago Bears versus whoever. Like I think they feel like that is part of their brand identity is that lakefront. ⁓ And I really think they are going to give it every serious consideration and attempt to make something along the lakefront work. But I also think at a certain point they want to get to the point where they can start to do more with their brand.

that they have communicated and expressed multiple times, that they'd like to be able to host major indoor concerts, that they would aspire to host Big Ten Championship games inside, both football and basketball-wise. So I'm starting to think that time is working against the Soldier Field, that South parking lot opportunity, and that they're going to focus their intention on how to make the Arlington site work.

I don't think it's overly detrimental to Chicagoland as a whole. The Giants still say they're the New York football Giants and yet they're in New Jersey. The Sunday night game of the week, the Rams, they're in Englewood, they're not in LA. The Niners are in, what is that, Santa Clara? Santa Barbara? One of those two Santas. So like, those new stadiums have been built to be bigger. And...

Aaron Masliansky (51:50)
Yeah.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (51:57)
urban cores just are so built out at this point that they don't have the acreage needed to do a contemporary stadium. So they've got to push out to the suburbs. As long as they don't get a wandering eye and start to look at another state because they need the incentives from Illinois to make the deal work, I think it'll be a good outcome for Chicagoland to keep them here. ⁓

Aaron Masliansky (52:21)
Yeah.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (52:24)
I do think as a Northwest sider, I am a little more excited for them to go to Arlington Heights because it'd be an easier commute to get out there for me versus the trek I have to do to get to Soldier Field, but that's more of a selfish need versus the broader regional impact.

Aaron Masliansky (52:28)
.

for sure.

But if you, you know, where you sit at CMAP and you're taught a lot of your charges, transportation planning, are you guys looking at it as the bears moving there as you plan for the future? Because that, that entails what do you do about the highways, the train system, um, the roads around there, how land use patterns develop from that area. I mean, completely changes that.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (53:06)
Yeah, we've had those conversations internally, but are still waiting to get a stronger indication from the Bears, from the state on like where this is going to go. Because, you know, for the end of the Ted Phillips regime, this was destined to be there.

Kevin Warren starts and he plus the McCasky family realized that the lakefront is very much part of their brand. then for what's that been two years, they've kicked the tires on the lakefront. So it's a little bit hard for us to plan when there's is this kind of ping pong back and forth of which side, which is the viable one.

Aaron Masliansky (53:33)
I think so.

Yeah. Well, hopefully they make it a really hard problem for everybody after they win the Super Bowl this year.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (53:49)
I was going to say, can we get to the playoffs and enjoy

maybe one or two playoff wins and then get into the business of where is the stadium going to be?

Aaron Masliansky (54:02)
Exactly. Yeah, let's get a big win, no doinks this time.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (54:06)
⁓ man, really? Maybe if you put it out there today, remove any, like, it just, we've named it so the karmic universe can't use that to punish us.

Aaron Masliansky (54:10)
No doinks.

Exactly. You're right. ⁓ there's so much good stuff going on in Chicago. ⁓ I'll leave you with this one last question. What do you think the biggest surprise is going to be in 10 years in Chicago?

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (54:36)
and 10 years in Chicago, what will be our biggest surprise?

I think it's going to be, I'm not going to be able to name anything specifically, but I think the Chicago becoming or kind of regaining some of its national admiration that we used to have, right? When you think about Sinatra singing about Chicago all those years ago, the affinity that people had for Chicago when Jordan and the Bulls were there.

I think the century plan and this next long range plan allows us to focus in on key things that matter to Chicagoans and being intentional on how we start to solve housing, how we ensure that that beautiful resource we have to the east that is the most precious commodity on the face of the planet is preserved, protected and allocated strategically mixed with all the good economic happenings. think the...

most pleasant surprise that everyone would have was just how we become the envy to other cities again and are not somebody's punching bag.

Aaron Masliansky (55:52)
I love that.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (55:54)
Yes, I'm tired of being the punching bag. I think we've got enough muscle as the city of big shoulders to punch back.

Aaron Masliansky (56:00)
Let's punch up for sure. Well, Kyle, thank you so much for joining me. Have a happy Thanksgiving and learn so much about what's going on.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (56:12)
Aaron, I appreciate you having me on today. This has been fun. Anytime you want to talk airplanes, come up to the North Park neighborhood of the city, you'll find me and one of my kids looking up and pointing out the Korean airline or the Australian plane coming to the airport.

Aaron Masliansky (56:26)
I'm there. See you soon.

Kyle Schulz - CMAP (56:28)
Thanks, man. Happy Thanksgiving.

Aaron Masliansky (56:30)
Thank you.