Ali Ata: Commercial Building in Chicago Nearly Reconstructed Following 2020 Fire

According to Ali Ata of AAIM Development, one of the nation’s foremost property development firms, the reconstruction of an AAIM Development building that burned down on Chicago’s Ashland Avenue in 2020 is nearly finished.

The 11,000-square-foot building was badly damaged by fire in May 2020 during a period of civil unrest in Chicago. At that time, the property housed seven restaurant and retail tenants that provided valuable services to the local community. However, four of the seven tenants have since completed their reconstruction work and are officially open for business.

According to Ali Ata, work by the other three tenants is slated to be completed by the end of April 2021. Then, the building is expected to be fully occupied at the end of May 2021—right in time for the busy summer buying season.

Ata said reconstructing the burned-down building has been a priority over the past several months due to its location along Ashland Avenue. This corridor remains an important north-south connecting street because it has witnessed both employment and residential growth over the past several years, and this is anticipated to continue. In fact, the number of people residing within half a mile of the section of the avenue between 95th Street and Irving Park Road is anticipated to increase by 24% (more than 50,000 people) by 2040, according to Chicago’s planning agency.

In addition, both the retail and the restaurant industry have relatively promising outlooks in Chicago, according to Ali Ata. For instance, restaurants are expected to continue thriving—even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic—if they embrace digitization by utilizing digital menus, cloud-based point of sales, and contactless payments, for example. In the same way, the retail sector should remain strong as long as companies learn how to digitize key processes, thus using technology to manage their sales and daily operations.

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