According to a WSJ article by Sheila Muto, Chicago beat New York on one retail count: 17.6% of all new bank branches built nationally in the past two years were built here, vs. 16.2% there.

In the past two years, banks in the Chicago metro area alone added 488 branches — more new branches than any other area in the U.S. During the same period, 447 new bank branches opened in the New York metro area [out of 2,765 branches nationwide, according to a survey from First Manhattan Consulting]…

“I can empathize with civic leaders that fear a run of vacancies,” says Steve Reider, president of Bancography Inc., a banking-industry market-research firm. Some banks are reluctant to retrofit a former bank location to fit their own design criteria, which can be as expensive as building another bank from scratch, he says. And with the exception of a jewelry store, he says, “there’s not a lot of demand from retailers for a space where a good chunk of it is taken up by a cast-iron and concrete vault.”