Energy benchmarking · Community areas

Where in Chicago are the best-rated large buildings?

Chicago's 77 community areas, ranked by how many of their large buildings earned four energy stars in 2023, with a check on what is driving each number.

By BUILDINGChicago editors. Published September 17, 2026. Data: City of Chicago, reporting year 2023, retrieved September 17, 2026.

The star rating in one paragraph

Large Chicago buildings must post a City placard showing zero to four stars. Under the Chicago Energy Rating System, stars come from the building's 1-100 ENERGY STAR score, or from its energy use per square foot where no score is available, and a building that fails to report gets zero. Which buildings are covered, and the annual June 1 deadline, are on the City's energy benchmarking page. The rating judges each building against its own type, so an area full of offices and an area full of schools start from different places.

Four-star share by community area

• West Town n=7044.3%
• Lake View n=15341.2%
• Logan Square n=4440.9%
• Near West Side n=23438.5%
• Edgewater n=8537.6%
• Loop n=29134.7%
• Rogers Park n=6134.4%
• Near South Side n=7932.9%
• Lincoln Park n=12132.2%
• Uptown n=8631.4%
• Hyde Park n=9030.0%
• Near North Side n=46627.5%
• Kenwood n=3823.7%
• Woodlawn n=3023.3%
• South Shore n=3417.6%
• Douglas n=3315.2%
• West Ridge n=336.1%
• 59 other areas, pooled n=57323.9%

Share of rated buildings at exactly four stars, 2023, community areas with 30 or more rated buildings. The other 59 areas with any rated building are pooled in the last row. Source: City of Chicago Energy Benchmarking dataset, our computation.

The Loop is two different stories

The Loop's 34.7% looks middling. It is an average of two very different groups. Its 132 rated office buildings hold four stars 47.0% of the time, with a median ENERGY STAR score of 76. Its 92 rated multifamily buildings hold four stars 21.7% of the time, with a median score of 51, the weakest multifamily result of any area we could compare.

Apartments only, area by area

Because multifamily is more than half of all rated buildings, comparing apartment buildings alone is the fairest neighborhood-to-neighborhood test. Twelve areas have at least 30 rated multifamily buildings.

Rated multifamily buildings, 2023. Median ENERGY STAR score over buildings in the group that report one.

On apartments alone, Rogers Park and Hyde Park move up the list, and the two downtown areas, Near North Side and the Loop, sit at the bottom. The dense high-rise districts have the weakest-rated apartment stock of the areas large enough to compare.

Read the bottom of the list carefully

West Ridge, Douglas and South Shore each have only 33 or 34 rated buildings, so one or two placards move their shares several points. Their ratings also cover only the buildings that reported. In Douglas and South Shore, a large share of covered buildings did not report at all in 2023, and non-reporters get zero stars, not a rating; we count those separately in how many covered buildings actually report. A low share here describes a small set of buildings, not a neighborhood.