The Chicago Reporter mapped nearly 900 Chicago addresses of stores whose parent companies were listed by Stores Magazine among the top-selling retailers in seven categories: supermarket, apparel, department store, home improvement, drug store, restaurant and value retailer, such as Costco and Target. In some cases, the parent companies operated several stores. For example, the Gap company owns the Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy stores. Stores Magazine, a monthly magazine of the National Retail Federation, the world’s largest retail trade association, ranked the retail companies by their 2004 sales revenues. The locations of all stores were provided by their respective parent companies. Consumer market information for each of Chicago’s 77 community areas was provided by the market research firm MetroEdge. Considering the concentration of retailers in the Loop and at O’Hare Airport, the Reporter did not include the Loop and the O’Hare community area in its analysis of community areas by race or income.
Department stores:
The Near North Side, a mostly white neighborhood just north of the Loop, features nine department stores in all, including Bloomingdales, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom and Lord & Taylor. Several of those department stores have locations just a few blocks away in the Loop. Both of the two department stores in black communities are Sears.