April 15, 2025 — LG Group Chief Operations Officer and Partner, Matt Wilke, provided key insights into the current state of commercial real estate in the wake of economic uncertainty driven by the federal government’s implementation of tariffs at the Chicago Construction & Development roundtable event, hosted by Bisnow.
During a discussion that leaned into the benefit of collaboration throughout the development process to navigate a landscape that’s getting trickier all the time, Wilke — one of the few to mention tariffs by name — detailed how they are raising prices on a recent project.
With a $140M construction project in the works in Nashville, he said the tariffs present about a $1.4M, or 1%, added cost to the development.
While the current economic impact is relatively small, Wilke observed that the larger issue is the trade policy’s disruptive influence on the market.
“It’s more of the chaos and uncertainty that just gives another reason to pause funding more developments and stop businesses from thinking about expanding,” Wilke said. “That’s really what it comes down to. That’s the problem.”
For Wilke, the key to navigating this chaotic environment is to find trustworthy partners, and begin transparent talks about profit and fee at the outset of projects.
“The old school ways of the design, bid, build process in our industry is almost totally out of the norm,” he shared. “I think most people on this panel agree that we’re seeing a lot more collaboration starting extremely early on in the project.”
Wilke was joined in the discussion by fellow industry leaders including Honigman LLP’s Patrick Johnson, CityPads’ Andy Ahitow, James McHugh Construction’s Kinjal Patel, United Center’s Terry Savarise and RIOS’ Sebastian Salvadó.
For full coverage of the roundtable event, click here.