In the 60661 ZIP code, 73 percent of residents were millennials, the generation born between 1983 and 2000, according to a report based on U.S. Census data from 2016 and released this week by RentCafe, an online marketplace for apartments.
Essentially the eastern West Loop, ZIP 60661 stretches from about a block west of the Chicago River to about a block west of the Kennedy Expressway on east and west, and from Kinzie Street to Van Buren Street on north and south.
Only three other U.S. ZIP codes had 70 percent or more residents who were millennials, one each in Philadelphia (ZIP 19127, 71%), New York (10005, 71%), and Boston (02113, 70%).
Many millennials, the oldest of whom are now in their mid-thirties, are renters, and 60661 has been one of the hot spots in the downtown apartment building boom of recent years, with towers like K2 on Halsted Street open since 2013, JeffJack on Jackson Boulevard completed in 2015, and Emme, a rental building with a vegetable farm on the roof finished this year on Desplaines Street. It also encompasses older rental properties such as Presidential Towers, built in 1986 on Madison Street. In raw numbers, Chicago's 60661 also topped those four, with 6,800 millennial residents, although it's not the nation's ZIP code with the most millennials. That's 77054 in Houston, where 14,400 millennials live, making up 63 percent of the population. Chicago's 60661 is ninth in body count. The largest number of millennials in a Chicago-area ZIP code is the more than 41,450 who live in 60657, in Lakeview between the lakefront and Damen and between Addison and Diversey. They're 59 percent of the population, according to RentCafe. In the other ZIP code that covers the West Loop, 60607, about 57 percent of residents are millennials. Nearly 16,200 millennials were living there in 2016, according to RentCafe. ZIP code 60607 runs west of 60661 to Ashland Avenue (and also contains areas south of the Eisenhower Expressway that aren't in the West Loop). Millennials make up at least half the population in nine Chicago ZIP codes. Along with those mentioned above, they are 60654 (61%), 60642 (60%), 60606 (57%), 60613 (54%), 60622 (53%) and 60614 (52%).
