Chicago's Central Manufacturing District

Chicago’s Central Manufacturing District (CMD) was the first planned manufacturing district in the United States. A century ago, 252 firms operated in its huge six-story buildings. Tenants ranged from small manufacturers to big names like Wrigley, Ford, United (Rexall) Drug, Pullman, and Westinghouse Electric. With outstanding rail connections and a broad variety of shared services, the CMD became one of the largest industrial parks in the world. Today, the CMD is empty, but the site retains many advantages, including central location, rail connections, expressways access, and robust fiber optic capacity, that may make it a hub of sustainable manufacturing. Potentially the CMD can be redeveloped as a new industrial ecodistrict.