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Chicago & Midwest  + Downtown  + Finance  | 
The City of Chicago's newly released The newly released Energy Benchmarking Report revealed a 25% reduction in carbon emissions by properties greater than 50,000 square feet

S&P Upgrades Chicago’s Outlook, Joining Three Other Rating Agencies

Standard & Poor’s (S&P) Global Ratings has upgraded its outlook to “stable” from “negative” and has assigned its ‘BBB+’ long-term rating to the City of Chicago. This news follows enactment of the 2022 Budget Plan and comes on the heels of an upgrade of the city’s outlook to stable by Fitch last month, and by Kroll and Moody’s this past summer.  

“The 2022 Budget is a reflection of the tremendous work that the city’s finance and budget team has done over the years to help our city reach structural balance,” said Mayor Lori Lightfoot. “We expect to reach structural balance by 2023, which bodes well for our prosperous, post-pandemic recovery.”  

S&P said the city has developed a “credible path to structural balance” which includes phasing out major one-time revenue sources after 2022, identifying new revenue sources, and climbing a pension contribution increase of $1 billion over the past three years.   

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About Paul Bubny

Paul Bubny serves as Senior Content Director for Connect Commercial Real Estate, a role to which he brings 16-plus years’ experience covering the commercial real estate industry and 30-plus years in business-to-business journalism. In this capacity, he oversees daily operations while also reporting on both local/regional markets and national trends, covering individual transactions across all property types, as well as delving into broader subject matter. He produces 7-10 daily news stories per day and works with the Connect team and clients to develop longer-form content, ranging from Q&As to thought-leadership pieces. Prior to joining Connect, Paul was Managing Editor for both Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com at American Lawyer Media, where he oversaw operations at both publications while also producing daily news and feature-length articles. His tenure in B2B publishing stretches back into the print era, and he has served as Editor in Chief on four national trade publications. Since 1999, Paul has volunteered as the newsletter editor of passenger rail advocacy groups (one national, one local).

  • ◦Financing
  • ◦Policy/Gov't
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