The Chicago White Sox Are About To Go From The Outhouse To The Penthouse. Their New South Loop Stadium Renderings Look Incredible

Crains Chicago- Justin Ishbia has unveiled his concept for a White Sox ballpark-anchored campus along the South Branch of the Chicago River, the first detailed look at an ambitious plan from the team’s billionaire owner-in-waiting as he faces community pushback to the megaproject’s critical first step.

Billing the proposal as a once-in-a-generation catalyst for economic growth, Ishbia today revealed conceptual renderings and plans for The Railyards, a mixed-use district that would transform more than 80 acres of existing Amtrak and BNSF tracks on the western edge of the river south of Roosevelt Road.

The expansive development would include residential and commercial properties running as far south as 18th Street, a Northwestern Medicine healthcare facility and what Ishbia describes as a potentially “viable new ballpark option for the Chicago White Sox” as the team approaches a 2029 expiration of its lease at publicly-owned Rate Field.

I wanted to title this blog a few different things- 

Chicago Has A Chance To Transform The South Loop And Save The White Sox. Naturally, We’re Trying To Fuck It Up

The White Sox Finally Have A Billionaire With A Fucking Plan

Justin Ishbia Might Be About To Save The White Sox And The South Loop At The Same Time

But ultimately decided to stay positive, and go with - The Chicago White Sox Are About To Go From The Outhouse To The Penthouse. Their New South Loop Stadium Renderings Look Incredible

Because if you're a White Sox fan, I don't really know what to tell you other than congratulations.

You have apparently died, gone to heaven, and been reincarnated into a completely different baseball organization.

Because after spending what feels like the last 100 years in the outhouse, Justin Ishbia looks ready to drag the White Sox directly into the fucking penthouse.

And not a moment too soon.

Crain's dropped an absolute bomb this morning detailing Ishbia's vision for "The Railyards,"- a massive development along the South Branch of the Chicago River that could include a brand new White Sox stadium, residential and commercial development, restaurants, retail, public space, a Northwestern Medicine facility and basically an entirely new neighborhood on more than 80 acres of land that have sat vacant, doing absolutely nothing for the city and generating zero revenue, south of Roosevelt Road.

This is a huge fucking deal for everybody in Chicago and isn't just "here's a new baseball stadium."

This is "let's build an entire new section/neighborhood of Chicago."

And look at this fucking thing.

If you're a Sox fan and you aren't ready to run through a brick wall after seeing those pictures, check your pulse, because you have to be dead.

For the last 20 years or so, the White Sox have felt like an organization permanently stuck in 1998. Same everything- ownership, general philosophy. Same ballpark surrounded by oceans of parking lots. And the uncanny inability to capitalize on playing in one of the greatest sports cities on earth. 

Meanwhile they've watched Wrigleyville transform into its own little economy on the North Side.

Hotels. Restaurants. Bars. Apartments. Concerts. Events. Shops. People walking around when the Cubs aren't even playing.

The Cubs figured out that a baseball stadium shouldn't be an island you drive to, watch three hours of baseball in, and immediately drive away from.

It should be an anchor. Actually, it should be THE fucking anchor that everything else is built around and benefits from. Not something surrounded by parking lots, and low income housing. 

That appears to be exactly what Ishbia understands.

His Shore Capital group has been pursuing Amtrak's 47-acre 14th Street Coach Yard south of downtown, land directly across the Chicago River from "The 78". His group has also discussed a Northwestern Medicine component, and the entire thing could ultimately create a giant mixed-use riverfront district at the southern edge of downtown.

Advertisement

And oh yeah, the Chicago Fire are already building their new stadium right ACROSS THE FUCKING RIVER.

Think about that for a second.

You could conceivably have a brand new White Sox ballpark on one side of the river, a brand new Chicago Fire stadium on the other, restaurants, bars, apartments, offices, healthcare, parks, riverfront access and tens of thousands of people constantly flowing through an area of Chicago that right now is largely fucking railroad tracks and empty acre lots of land. 

This is the kind of shit other cities would sell their firstborn children for. And Chicago very desperately needs it.

I love this fucking city. I've lived here for more than 20 years now. I'll defend Chicago against anybody.

But you also have to possess functioning eyeballs.

Go walk down State Street. There are stretches of downtown that look like somebody dropped a bomb on it. 

The Loop's retail vacancy rate was still roughly 28.5 percent in 2025. State Street itself has been hammered since COVID by disappearing commuters, remote work, rampant unprosecuted crime, changing retail habits, and major flagship tenants heading for the hills. 

(Sidebar- I'd be remiss to point out, and leave myself open to criticism from losers like that fucking coward west loop bob, that there are finally signs of life again, including a Barnes & Noble and Gap coming back, but weekday downtown foot traffic was still only about 82 percent of 2019 levels earlier this year. ANd listen, I fucking love Barnes & Noble. not The Gap so much ("you're better than the gap"), but to each their own, but those are businesses that cities like St. Louis and Milwaukee get excited for and announce openings for. Not fucking Chicago.)

(Sidebar to the sidebar- I'm no business genius by any means. Far from it. I've had a few hits and a few misses. But I feel in my plums that Barnes and Noble is sitting on one of the biggest layups in retail right now, and they don't even need to reinvent the company to pull it off. They're already making a pretty incredible comeback. Now go one step further and stop thinking of Barnes & Noble strictly as a bookstore. Turn it into the best coffeehouse in America that also happens to sell books.

Partner with somebody like La Colombe. Not Starbucks. That's the whole point. Give a legitimately good coffee brand that doesn't have 17 locations at every intersection access to hundreds of Barnes & Noble stores, then completely redesign the café experience around actually wanting people to stay there. Big comfortable chairs. Couches. Real tables. Outlets everywhere. Books, magazines, newspapers, e-books, coffee, food. Let people work for three hours without feeling like they're occupying a chair specifically engineered to make their ass hurt after 27 minutes. Because somewhere along the way Starbucks forgot that the entire reason people fell in love with Starbucks was that it was supposed to be the "third place." Now half of them feel like sterile airport waiting rooms where you're drinking a $7 latte on patio furniture while listening to some catastrophically curated indie playlist that sounds like it was assembled by some dickhead 26-year-old creative director trying desperately to prove he knows a band you don't. Barnes & Noble already has the thing Starbucks is desperately trying to manufacture again: warmth. People actually like being in bookstores. They browse. They wander around. They discover shit. There are books everywhere. It smells good. It's naturally quiet without feeling depressing. There's something inherently comforting about the place. All Barnes & Noble has to do is open the concept up a little, make the café a destination instead of an amenity, and lean all the way into becoming America's living room)

Advertisement

Anyways- back to downtown Chicago hurting, and The Loop feeling like a ghost town. (With the exception of the west loop). 

We're talking about STATE STREET.

"That great street" as Mr. Sinatra famously called it.

One of the most famous streets in one of the greatest cities in America, and for several years now there have been portions of it where you could fire a fucking cannon down the sidewalk without hitting anybody.

Chicago needs people downtown.

We need people fucking living downtown.

And estaurants booming and buzzing.

We need entertainment, and theatres, and bars, and nightclubs downtown. 

Because those are the things that differentiate "a city" like Chicago, from a fucking suburb like Arlington, or a cornfield in Indiana. Those are the reasons people desire to live in cities. When people want to live in cities, businesses want to be open in cities because that's where they can make money, and that's where they can attract the best talent to hire. This isn't fucking rocket science.

We need people coming downtown when they don't have a court date or a meeting at 9 a.m.

And now you're telling me somebody wants to spend enormous amounts of their own, private money, helping build what could essentially become Chicago's version of a brand-new entertainment district right smack dab on the river?

Fucking fantastic.

But wait. Not so fast my friends…

Giphy Images.

Advertisement

Because the fact something this fortunate seems to finally be breaking Chicago's way of course means Chicago is currently exploring whether it can somehow fuck the entire thing up.

Because obviously.

The key to unlocking Ishbia's property is Amtrak relocating its maintenance operations from the 14th Street yard to a new facility near Rate Field in Bridgeport.

I

The imagery and details highlight the economic upside of unlocking the Amtrak 14th Street Coach Yard site Ishbia aims to buy and redevelop. That’s an important discussion point for him amid Bridgeport community pushback to a proposed $900 million replacement railcar maintenance facility in the South Side neighborhood that would make The Railyards project possible. An Ishbia-led venture is slated to build the new Amtrak facility on an existing 60-acre Union Pacific property near Rate Field as part of a larger deal to take control of the 14th Street yard.

Important distinction here because I've already seen people getting this mixed up- we're not talking about moving Union Station or dropping an Amtrak passenger terminal into somebody's backyard.

It's a fucking maintenance facility.

Amtrak says it evaluated rebuilding at 14th Street and another Union Pacific site before determining the Canal Street Yard near Rate Field worked best operationally. Among the reasons Amtrak cited were "the difficulty of rebuilding around active train operations and limitations involving availability, routing and construction at the other location."

That nod to public process comes as Ald. Nicole Lee, 11th, Cook County Commissioner John Daley and local residents have vowed to try to block Amtrak’s move to Bridgeport. Lee told Crain’s this week she will oppose a zoning change if Ishbia’s venture seeks one at City Hall.

Lee hopes to convince Sox ownership to instead focus on building up the massive parking lots surrounding Rate Field.

“The White Sox belong in the 11th Ward on 35th Street,” she said this week. “What we don’t want is for it to be the first domino that falls, that then leaves us an empty ballpark, undeveloped land and a 24/7 rail yard that is being put there.”

Ishbia is investing more than $125 million toward the development of the Bridgeport facility. An Ishbia-led entity called Canal Edge will lead the project, which could begin construction as soon as this fall and take 18 months to complete.

The funding from Ishbia will combine with $696 million in federal transportation grants to build out the new Amtrak facility and improve Amtrak’s South Branch Bridge. Ishbia’s contribution will effectively allow him to take control of the current 14th Street site.

Naturally, people who actually live in Bridgeport have concerns.

And they should.

If somebody showed up tomorrow and said, "Hey Dante, great news, we're putting a giant 24-hour railroad maintenance operation next to your house," I probably wouldn't respond by popping champagne.

Residents have raised completely legitimate questions about noise, pollution, traffic, property values and why they felt something this significant had gotten as far as it did without more community involvement.Their  Alderwoman. Nicole Lee has publicly opposed the proposed location and said she wants the White Sox to remain at 35th Street.

Fair enough.

But here's the part I don't understand- why does this have to become another classic Chicago binary choice where somebody has to lose and only side can come out happy?

Either destroy Bridgeport or kill the South Loop development.

Either the Sox stay exactly where they are forever or Bridgeport gets abandoned.

Either Amtrak gets what it wants or residents get what they want.

There has to be a fucking middle ground here. We used to practice and preach this thing called compromise in this country.

Build the new Amtrak facility, but make Amtrak and the developers earn community acceptance.

Put the most intensive maintenance operations as far away from homes as physically possible. Enclose operations wherever feasible and build some fucking serious sound and visual barriers. Route trucks away from residential streets. Require independent environmental and noise monitoring. None of this self-check bullshit. Create landscaped buffers. Put every mitigation commitment in writing instead of handing residents a glossy PowerPoint and telling them everything is going to be great, "just trust us".

And most importantly, solve Ald. Nicole Lee's biggest legitimate concern before the first shovel goes into the ground- what happens to 35th and Shields if the White Sox leave?

Because she's absolutely right that the worst possible outcome would be building a shiny palace downtown and leaving Bridgeport with a gigantic empty Rate Field surrounded by 70 acres of fucking asphalt.

So make redevelopment of the existing Sox property part of the deal. None of this "we'll study it someday" lip-service bullshit politicians and big swinging dick businessmen love to give us.

I'm talking a genuine real plan.

Housing + retail + parks + restaurants. Shit the actual community uses. Like some nice youth sports facilities. Things that benefit everybody in the area. Development that reconnects those gigantic parking lots to Bridgeport instead of sitting their like eyesores because nobody wants to take a loss on their profit sheet, despite the fact nobody is coming knocking interested in leasing or buying parking on 35th st with no baseball team playing 81 games next to them anymore.

If Ishbia wants the Railyards, and Amtrak wants its modern maintenance facility and Chicago wants billions of dollars of economic activity, then all three sides should have enough incentive to make Bridgeport better off in the process. Am I crazy?

That's the compromise.

Because killing the entire thing would be fucking nuts. (And so Chicago at the same time.)

Especially when Ishbia intends to privately finance the actual White Sox stadium itself.

Advertisement

Do you understand how refreshing those words are in Chicago?

PRIVATE.

FINANCING.

The White Sox spent years discussing "The 78" while Jerry Reinsdorf sought significant public help- aka tax dollars, tax breaks, public handouts, free land, etc. for a new ballpark. Because he's the cheapest mother fucker alive. Meanwhile, Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto moved ahead with a privately financed stadium across the river, though public TIF money is supporting infrastructure around The 78.

Now Ishbia walks in seemingly saying- "I'll build the ballpark."

That should be music to everybody's ears. And forget about the baseball for a minute.

Chicago has spent years talking about how to revive downtown.

Well this is how you do it. By buildingh shit people actually want to go to.

You create neighborhoods instead of office districts, put sports, restaurants, apartments, healthcare, entertainment and green space together. Then connect it to transit. and you put people on our beautiful river walks.

You give somebody visiting Chicago another reason to look south of Roosevelt Road instead of treating downtown like civilization ends at the museum campus. Finally.

And for White Sox fans, Jesus Christ.

Look at where you've been. You poor things. 

Giphy Images.

Then look at those renderings.

You've gone from praying Jerry Reinsdorf might someday discover free agency, to having a billionaire future owner assembling gigantic pieces of riverfront property and showing off plans for an entire baseball neighborhood.

From the outhouse to the penthouse indeed! 

Potentially faster than anybody could have imagined.

There are a million hurdles between a beautiful AECOM rendering and walking into a brand new White Sox stadium. Ishbia doesn't control the team today of couse, Reinsdorf still does. The Sox lease at Rate Field runs through 2029, and the ownership agreement gives Reinsdorf control over when or whether he sells within the framework the two sides established. "The Railyards" still needs months of feasibility work, transportation study, environmental review and community input.

But nobody should pretend this thing is breaking ground Monday morning.

Yes, Chicago finally has somebody putting a massive, coherent vision on the table. One involving private capital. And one of our most neglected professional sports franchises. And that could also turn acres of railroad infrastructure into one of the most valuable neighborhoods in the Midwest.

This is a vision capable of pumping life into the southern edge of dontown at the exact moment downtown needs every fucking shot in the arm can get.

So listen to Bridgeport and protect it. Make it better as part of the deal.

Then figure out Amtrak.

Thne figure out 35th and Shields.

But for the love of God, Chicago, please, please, please do not spend the next five years finding 750 different committees, procedural roadblocks, political turf wars and reasons why something this transformational cannot happen. 

For once, figure out how it can.

The White Sox might finally be escaping the outhouse. Chicago politics should probably avoid locking the door from the outside and fucking the whole thing up.

Advertisement

p.s.- this was a great poingt from @sfrr024 on twitter

You made up big time facing homeplate east this time, and not away from it, so that you can see the greatest skyline in the country as the backdrop… but you can't fuck it up by blocking it with that gigantic scoreboard AND prevent guys from hitting bombs into the river. Think about the architetcture tour boats and those annoying fucking green kayakers getting pelted with balls on a Sunday afternoon in July and tell me that wouldn't be awesome. 

p.p.s.- the artist formerly known as White Sox Dave had this to say-