Understanding the features in Businesses Snapshot

The Businesses Snapshot has four features to learn about businesses in specific areas of Chicago. Businesses Snapshot is separate but comes from Place Snapshot; the Licenses and Businesses maps and data tables were once part of Place Snapshot.

Table of contents

Businesses Snapshot provides the following information for predefined Place Snapshots and Personal Places:

• New business licenses issued since a specific time. By default, only licenses issued in the last 7 days are shown, but if visited after clicking on a link in a Place Snapshot email notification then business licenses issued since the date specified in the email notification are shown.
• Business types compared to similar places. Activities of different businesses are summarized in the given Businesses Snapshot and compared to others of the same Place Type; for example, one Chicago community area is compared to the 76 other community areas.
• All business licenses. Businesses in Chicago that are required to obtain a license may have multiple licenses but obtain them at different times. This view shows each license in the order they're obtained, regardless if a business may have additional licenses.
• All businesses. This views shows each business, and combines all of their licenses into a single list.

How to access Businesses Snapshot

Businesses Snapshot is available only to Cityscape Real Estate Pro members.

Every Businesses Snapshot must be accessed from a Place Snapshot. Search through all of them in Place Snapshot Explorer, or access one of these Places: Albany Park community area, 25th Ward, and the 60608 ZIP code.

Businesses Snapshot also works with CTA and Metra stations to assess the types of businesses near transit facilities.

Features of Businesses Snapshot

New business licenses issued since a specific time

Many business associations like Chambers of Commerce and Special Service Areas are required to monitor new businesses opening in their service areas. This section makes it very easy to do that by showing only the newly issued business licenses. This section is a simplified and filtered view of the "All business licenses" section and it complements the Place Snapshot email notifications.

Each Place Snapshot email notification potentially lists dozens of new business licenses, which are hard to peruse in an email. Instead, each email notification links to a version of this section that is filtered by time. If the email notification is received daily, then the filtered view shows only licenses issued since the day before.

Business types compared to similar places

Measure the types of businesses in a given Place Snapshot and compare it to other Place Snapshots of the same type. For example, it's possible to compare how many dry cleaners are in the Albany Park community area compared to the average number in all 77 community areas (see screenshot 1).

Screenshot 1

We know there are dry cleaners because the Chicago Department of Business Affairs (BACP), the authority which issues businesses licenses, assigns one or more activity codes to each license. Nearly 100 percent of businesses have an activity code assigned, and a very large portion have two (the average is 1.25 activities per license).

According to BACP's data, there is 1 business license in the Albany Park community area with the "dry cleaning" service activity code, while the average for Chicago's 77 community areas is 6.4. This means that the Albany Park community area has a below-average number of dry cleaning businesses (see screenshot 2).

Screenshot 2

Each business owner's business plan should guide them on how to interpret the data. While the Albany Park community area may have below-average dry cleaning businesses compare to the 76 other community areas of Chicago, this doesn't necessarily mean that there is demand for more. Only the prospective business owner's market analysis can help them determine their strategy.

All business licenses

Every weekday, BACP issues 100s of new and renewed licenses to businesses across Chicago and Chicago Cityscape checks for new license data every few hours. This map and data table shows the location, name, dates, and ownership information for each one, in the order the license was issued.

Businesses in Chicago that are required to obtain a license may have multiple licenses but obtain them at different times. This view shows each license in the order they're obtained, regardless if a business may have additional licenses. If a business receives multiple licenses at the same time those will appear in the same row. If the licenses are issued at different times then there will be a separate row for each license.

Filters

These business licenses can be filtered seven ways:

1. Search radius, to expand the search distance beyond the current boundaries shown on the map. By default, the distance is set to 0.
2. Active status - Chicago Cityscape can show expired licenses and "future" licenses, which are for start times in the future.
3. Issuance status - Has the license been issued for the first time or is it being renewed?
4. Special filters - There is currently only one special filter, to show only those that BACP considers home-based businesses.
5. License type - Some businesses are required to obtain a non-limited license, which have more regulations.
6. Business activity code - Filter by the activities shown in the "Business types compared to similar places" section.
7. Issuance date - Show only those licenses that were issued in a selected time period.

All businesses

This section is very similar to "All business licenses" but shows fewer rows. Rather than showing one license per row, this shows one business per row and combines a business's multiple licenses into a single row.

The "All business licenses" section is important if you're interested in learning about every change in a business's status or function (like adding a license) as the change happens.