Swansenreport

When It Rains It Pours: Morton Salt Leaves Chicago After 176 Years

While this move happened in late 2024, the companies moving from high tax states and cities like NYC to Miami which does welcome  successful business environment, continue to happen.

The Morton Salt Girl is gone from Chicago. After 176 years in Illinois, the company whose slogan became a piece of American cultural fabric quietly packed up and moved its headquarters to Overland Park, Kansas — joining a long and growing list of major corporations that have walked out on the state under Governor JB Pritzker.

Morton Salt finalized its headquarters move in late 2024, leasing space at the Corporate Woods office park in Overland Park, Kansas. The city sits adjacent to Kansas City and is near a major Morton salt mine — a practical consideration, but also part of a broader pattern of Illinois companies voting with their feet. FOX6 News Milwaukee

Illinois office space runs at roughly double the price of comparable Kansas locations. Kansas has been aggressively courting relocating businesses, and Morton’s parent company already had infrastructure in the region through Kissner Salt. The move also followed a 40 percent staff reduction at Morton’s Chicago headquarters after the company was acquired in 2021. WisPolitics

Morton didn’t leave alone. The company is part of a larger exodus that has quietly hollowed out Chicago’s corporate base. Citadel relocated its global headquarters to Miami. Boeing, which had moved to Chicago in 2001 as a vote of confidence in the city, left for Arlington, Virginia in 2022. Caterpillar, an Illinois anchor for nearly a century, moved to Irving, Texas. Since 2018, at least 314 companies have moved headquarters to Texas alone, many from Illinois, and Illinois’ business climate ranking has fallen from 29th to 37th over that same period. WisPolitics

The social media posts framing the Morton Salt departure as a direct, singular consequence of Pritzker’s taxes deserve a small qualifier: the move was completed in late 2024 and involved a combination of factors including parent company consolidation and real estate costs — not just state tax rates alone. But tax climate clearly played a role, and Pritzker has shown little interest in the issue. The governor was last in the news for calling on Republicans to have “no moment of peace” — not for announcing a strategy to reverse Illinois’ corporate flight.

The Morton Salt Girl has left the building. For Chicago, the rain keeps falling.

Sources: Wikipedia — Morton Salt | Illinois Policy / Wirepoints | Rep. Coffey / Illinois Policy