“What I find particularly compelling is that the initiative is increasingly pairing that ambition with a thoughtful path toward implementation—one that recognizes the importance of institutional partnerships, demonstrated demand, economic validation, responsible risk management, transparent governance, and phased financing. Projects of this scale require both vision and discipline, and I believe the World Technology Center has the potential to become an important platform for innovation, workforce development, and long-term economic opportunity in Chicago and beyond”
— Darcellus L. Wrice
Founder, Wrice Financial Group
Financial Strategy & Risk Advisor
for the World Technology Center project
Economic IMPACT
The project's value proposition for the city and the wider community
At a Glance
Jobs + Skills
The World Technology Center is envisioned as a transformative infrastructure initiative designed to position Chicago as a leading global hub for science, technology, and innovation.
At scale, the project aims to provide the city a permanent anchor for high-value science and technology jobs, training and investment. The figures on this page are the project's working estimates. They show scale and mechanism, and an independent economic impact assessment will replace them before any funding is sought.
75,000 permanent jobs
Across engineering, research, manufacturing, computing, education and public service. This figure is the project's own capacity-based estimate. Where other analyses produced higher numbers, the project has used the more conservative one. Two further layers of employment sit on top of it. Construction would employ tradespeople, engineers and project managers over a build period measured in decades. And each new innovation-sector job tends to support roughly five more in local services. Both effects are kept separate from the headline figure. The region is ready for this workforce. For example, Chicagoland's digital technology sector generated more than $39 billion in economic output and employed over 99,000 people in 2024, according to World Business Chicago. Indiana adds strength in advanced manufacturing and semiconductors, anchored by Purdue University.
Apprenticeships + Industry Training
Paid apprenticeships inside live research projects, with study on the same campus. Students, graduates and early-career professionals would work on the real research and development projects of resident companies and institutions while studying on site. For apprentices, that means hands-on experience in working laboratories, a direct pathway into full-time employment, and lower barriers for groups under-represented in science and engineering. For employers, it means a reliable talent pipeline, lower recruitment costs and higher retention. The model builds on a regional strength. For instance, the State of Illinois runs more than 450 Registered Apprenticeship programs serving nearly 22,000 apprentices, and in 2026 'Site Selection' magazine ranked it first in the Midwest and third in the nation for workforce development.
Local jobs supported by each innovation job
Research by the economist Enrico Moretti suggests that each new innovation-sector job in a city supports roughly five more in local services, from restaurants to healthcare. This effect is described (not added into the jobs figure) in our contextual report.
600 to 800 tenant organizations
From start-ups and scale-ups to established firms, universities, professional societies and national laboratories, all sharing one campus.
Wider
economic effects
Amongst direct provision of thousands of STEM-related careers, the wider economic and community impact include the following:
District regeneration
Thirty-five underused acres near downtown, brought back into productive use. The proposed site is an underused tract on Chicago's Near West Side. Redeveloping it fits the City's Central Area Plan 2045, which calls for growth in 21st-century sectors and the reuse of vacant and underused property. The campus would not arrive alone. Nearby, Related Midwest's The 78 is turning 62 vacant riverside acres into a new neighborhood, and the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park is taking shape on the Southeast Side. A science campus of this scale would reinforce that momentum.
Productivity with passive wellbeing
Gardens, daylight and clean air are an economic asset, not just an amenity. Field experiments published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied found that adding plants to a sparse office raised productivity by around 15 percent. A Harvard-led study recorded markedly higher cognitive-function scores among workers in green, well-ventilated buildings. For an enterprise whose output is intellectual, that matters.
Visitors and conventions
A public destination with a 1,500-foot observation deck, library, exhibitions and conference space. The Open Heavens Observation Deck, the American Library of STEM, exhibition halls, a museum, gardens, a music venue and a seasonal ice rink would draw visitors who spend on hotels, restaurants, transport and retail across the district. The campus's own hotel, shopping concourse and dining venues would capture part of that spending directly. Continuously operating conference facilities set among working laboratories would add a steady, year-round stream of professional visitors. Delegates could tour research spaces and meet the scientists behind the work, which no conventional convention center can offer.
Regulation that keeps pace
Government agencies working on site, so standards and safety questions are settled as work proceeds. A dedicated federal workshop building would bring agencies into daily contact with the people developing new technology. The same principle applies to export controls. Firms in aerospace and dual-use technology carry heavy fixed compliance costs, which fall hardest on start-ups. Shared compliance infrastructure, from access-controlled laboratories to expert advice offered as a campus service, would spread those costs across hundreds of tenants. The efficiency gain is not deregulation. It is the removal of friction from regulation that remains fully in force.
Start-ups and shared facilities
Shared cleanrooms and laboratories that let young companies do what they could never afford alone. Facility cost is one of the highest barriers in deep technology. On campus, start-ups would book certified lab and cleanroom time and work beside established firms, university researchers, mentors and a pipeline of apprentices, shortening the path from discovery to product. Partnerships would be sought across three communities: universities in the United States and abroad; Chicago's schools and community colleges, through outreach and pre-apprenticeship pathways; and organizations in aerospace, computing, energy, software, life sciences and national research.
Living on Campus
Homes and childcare are on site, so researchers spend less time commuting and more time with their families. The upper floors of both towers are planned as long-term residences, alongside housing for apprentices and students and serviced apartments for visiting researchers. For those who live on campus, the daily commute becomes an elevator ride. On-site daycare would let parents work minutes from their children, which helps resident organizations attract and keep talent, particularly early-career researchers and dual-career couples. For everyone else, the campus’s transit-first design, centered on a proposed Blue Line station, keeps travel short. Residents also keep the gardens, plazas and shops lively long after working hours.
Sustainability
A campus that targets 100% renewable electricity and runs on the technologies it exists to advance. Power would come from photovoltaic glazing on the towers, hydrogen fuel cells in the basement plant and a dedicated offsite generation facility. Waste would be sorted and recovered on site, with non-recyclable residue converted to energy in a plant fitted with carbon capture. Structural steel would come from recycled, electric-arc-furnace production.
A broader tax base
New income, sales, business and property tax revenue on land that is largely idle today. Well-paid employees generate income and sales taxes, and resident organizations contribute business taxes. The development itself, along with rising property values around it, enlarges the property-tax base. Those revenues help fund the schools, services and infrastructure the wider community depends on.
Global collaboration
Researchers from many nations in one place, working openly and lawfully. International collaboration consistently produces higher-impact science, yet researchers face real barriers to working across borders. Modeled on the openness of laboratories such as CERN, the campus would bring researchers together and help them navigate the rules efficiently. Over the longer term, anchor institutions like this tend to seed spin-off companies, supply chains and skilled networks that compound over decades. These effects are possibilities rather than projections, but they are how a project like this could help keep the Midwest's graduates in the Midwest.
How these figures were built
- METHODOLOGY -
Every figure on this page is a conservative working estimate, due to be replaced by an independent assessment. The estimates rest on three inputs: the masterplan's floor area and its number of projected tenant organizations; the documented outcomes of comparable developments and current Chicago workforce data; and established economics, such as the local multiplier for innovation jobs. Three rules govern how they are used. Where estimates differ, the more conservative figure is adopted. Construction jobs are counted separately from permanent jobs. Multiplier effects are described, not added into headline totals. An independent economic impact assessment and a validated cost model are defined milestones of the feasibility phase, and their results will be published. The project is also candid about risk. Most megaprojects worldwide exceed their budgets. The strategy is built to manage that: thorough design and public review before any commitment, partners and tenants secured before capital is sought, and construction in phases. The full approach is on The Strategy
Precedents
Comparable developments show how one coordinated project can create a new district of high-value activity.
1 / Hudson Yards, New York
A 28-acre district over an active rail yard, projected to add close to $19 billion a year to New York's economy.
A 2016 internal study commissioned by its developers, Related Companies and Oxford Properties, projected more than 55,000 jobs once complete. Related's Chicago arm, Related Midwest, is now developing The 78.
2 / Canary Wharf, London
Derelict docklands that became one of the world's leading financial districts within a generation. Built from the 1980s onward, it is now a workplace for more than 100,000 people and a byword for urban regeneration.
3 / Starbase, Texas
A sparse stretch of coastline that grew into a new city around one aerospace company. Starbase voted to incorporate in May 2025. A Cameron County impact study credited it with more than $13 billion in regional economic output and about 24,000 direct and indirect jobs over two years.
Each case differs from the World Technology Center in purpose and financing. Together they show that development on underused land, anchored by a clear mission, can permanently shift a region's economic geography.