Yunus Emre Tozal: Chicago’s quantum park comes with a $9 billion price tag. Who actually benefits? - Chicago Tribune

The Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park under construction along the lakefront on June 25, 2026, at the former U.S.

Steel South Works site on the South Side of Chicago. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune) By Yunus Emre Tozal | Special to the TribunePUBLISHED: September 7, 2026 at 5:00 AM CDT Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...For decades, the docks where the Calumet River empties into Lake Michigan, along South Chicago’s shoreline, received iron ore. This summer, the same shoreline is taking on a different kind of cargo: components for one of the world’s largest quantum computing campuses. Rising on the former U.S.

Steel South Works site, the Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park (IQMP) promises to redefine the postindustrial identity of this stretch of Chicago’s South Side, spanning the neighborhoods of South Chicago, South Shore and the Bush. But beneath that promise sits a question local residents still haven’t gotten a clear answer to: Who is this transformation actually for? The numbers are striking. The project is being introduced as the first phase of roughly $9 billion in investment. Anchor tenant PsiQuantum aims to build the country’s first million qubit, fault-tolerant quantum computer here. IBM, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Diraq and Quantum Machines have all signed on. Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson are presenting the campus as the chance to make Illinois the Silicon Valley of quantum computing. Chicago largely missed the digital revolution the first time around. This time, city and state leaders want to lead. I lived a few miles up the lakefront from South Works for eight years, and I don’t think Chicago should walk away from this opportunity. But I also don’t think it should hand over hundreds of millions in public money without locking in, on paper, what residents get in return. The state has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the project, and the county is offering $175 million in property tax breaks over the next thirty years. According to Block Club Chicago reporting, IBM has pledged 750 full-time jobs in exchange, while PsiQuantum has committed to just 150. Pritzker himself has said he can’t yet confirm how many jobs the other tenants will bring. None of this points to bad faith. But look closely: On one side, a promise of thousands of jobs. On the other, a pledge of only hundreds of full-time positions. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a mountain of a gap. There is no consensus in South Chicago. Southside Together is the only community group to flatly oppose the project.

Organizer Jerry Whirley has said the issue isn’t opposition to innovation itself, but companies arriving without first asking residents what they actually want, treating the neighborhood as a testing ground. The group pushed for an advisory referendum to be placed on the March primary ballot, but the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners pulled it from the ballot on procedural grounds. Meanwhile, a newer group called Southeast Neighbors for Quantum believes the campus can genuinely lift local businesses and employment and has said so publicly. PsiQuantum has already backed that optimism with $250,000 in funding for science, technology, engineering and math education at South Side schools. Some activists also object specifically to DARPA’s presence on campus, worried about quantum technology’s potential to strengthen global surveillance. At the center of the dispute sits a document that still hasn’t been signed: a legally binding community benefits agreement (CBA). Reporting by the Chicago Reader and The TRiiBE lays out the coalition’s specific asks: protection against displacement from rising housing costs, guaranteed local hiring, preservation of parks and natural habitat, limits on pollution, a tax break for residents that mirrors what developers are getting and a community credit union to support small businesses. Neither city officials nor developer Related Midwest have committed to signing such an agreement. This is where the real test of urban planning begins. Holding 50 public meetings is one thing. Making a written, enforceable commitment is another. Chicago doesn’t have to give up its shot at quantum leadership. That potential is real, and it matters for the regional economy. But the old formula of “the big investment is coming, and the rest will sort itself out” has failed Illinois before. In 1989, Illinois and the village of Hoffman Estates created a special tax district to keep Sears’ headquarters from leaving the state. Over the following three decades, that deal and its renewals grew into more than half a billion dollars in tax breaks and incentives, the largest package of its kind ever given to a single company in Illinois. Three days after the deal was announced, Sears laid off 400 managerial employees. By the time the new headquarters opened in 1992, the company had already shed 1,600 headquarters jobs and 43,000 jobs companywide. An independent study commissioned decades later found the incentive package made no measurable long-term economic difference for Hoffman Estates compared with nearby suburbs that never made the deal. So what can be done for South Chicago? • The city and state could build a public dashboard that independently tracks job commitments against subsidy dollars. • They could tie continued tax breaks directly to enforceable local hiring rates. • They could offer real protection against rent increases in the surrounding area, guaranteeing that a defined rate stays capped for a defined period. None of this is about slowing innovation down. It’s about making sure South Chicago is the subject of this transformation, not just its backdrop. Until a binding agreement is signed, every dollar the city and state hand over is a bet made on a developer’s word alone. Chicago has made that bet before. It shouldn’t make it again without something in writing.

Yunus Emre Tozal is a civil engineer in Chicago and a graduate student at the Catholic Theological Union. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com. Share this: Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky Share on X (Opens in new window) X Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email