Illinois

More than 50 years ago, I was witness to the birth of a new building type in Chicago’s suburbs — the great sprawling corporate campus. From Motorola and McDonald’s to Ameritech and Sears, some of the most influential brands in the world started taking root in Chicago’s bucolic suburbs as they looked to consolidate business divisions under one large roof and to provide a stimulating work environment away from the hustle and bustle of the inner city. Today, many of these corporate meccas sit vacant due to the rise in telecommuting and a shift in workforce demographics. The simple version of the narrative is that instead of people chasing the jobs, firms are now chasing the talent. And for the moment, many employees prefer to live and work in the city. While some suburbs are strongly associated with the companies who previously occupied those campuses, there is another story to tell in terms of the opportunities change can bring to these properties and their surrounding communities. As the architect who designed two of these campuses, the AT&T (né Ameritech) corporate campus in Hoffman Estates in 1989 and McDonald’s global headquarters in Oak Brook starting in 1978, I have repeatedly been …

Long before the emergence of Fulton Market, local real estate professionals referred to the West Loop as the office submarket between Wells Street and immediately west of the Chicago River. But today some also refer to the Fulton Market area, an area one mile west and across a natural boundary of the Kennedy Expressway, as the West Loop. So which is it? The West Loop is the leading — and by far the largest — office submarket in Chicago with over 50 million square feet of office space inventory. Its proximity to public transportation and wide setbacks along Wacker Drive and the Chicago River offer better view corridors and more access to natural light — key competitive advantages in an area that permits more buildable density than the periphery of the central business district (CBD).   On the other hand, Fulton Market has its own distinct “edgy” identity that some area office tenants consider the antithesis of the Loop (recall that the original reference to the Loop meant the area surrounded by the Elevated CTA tracks, the “El,” that loops around the CBD).   The West Loop proper has witnessed significant change in the last 10 to 15 years. The …

Over the past four years, Chicago’s legal sector has accounted for almost 750,000 square feet of negative net absorption despite a robust economy keeping demand for legal services of all types strong. While much has been written about large law firms shedding space as they reconfigure their offices with open floor plans that appeal to millennial and Generation Z talent, not all are following the same course of action. Finding the right size At one end of the spectrum, many large law firms are electing to relocate to ultra-efficient trophy towers, justifying the exorbitant construction costs and rent increases associated with building out new space in Class A+ towers  by shedding enormous amounts of space from their footprints. Of the four firms larger than 100,000 square feet that have elected to reduce their space when relocating to newly constructed towers since 2015, all have been able to shed roughly 35.5 percent of their prior footprints on average, with some firms achieving even greater reductions. For example, Holland & Knight attained a 45 percent space reduction in its recently announced move from 105,000 square feet at Citadel Center to 57,000 square feet at 150 North Riverside. There are also many large …

It’s an exciting time to be part of the action in Chicago’s real estate market. While Illinois remains an “outflow” state, construction cranes dot the Chicago skyline and the city’s inflow numbers remain positive. Large employers are considering Chicago for campus-like headquarters operations and exciting markets are continuing to grow. In particular, west side blight continues to be replaced by residential growth in the West Loop, with retail services finally gaining momentum despite slow adoption by soft goods merchants. The West Loop’s immediate neighbor to the north, Fulton Market, maintains its buzz as the popular new kid in town, demonstrated by its ability to attract office tenants. Yes, office tenants. Transportation for workers, the primary objection to Fulton Market that has previously knocked it out of contention, will continue to be a challenge as public options slowly catch up to the development in the area. Employers will have to be creative in providing alternatives for new talent not within reasonable cycling or ride-sharing range. How did this happen when a decade ago the notion of office space west of the expressway was thought to be an absurd one? Because Chicago is not landlocked to the west by any natural barriers, …

Office developers in Chicago are thinking outside the box — and outside the central business district — in order to cater to tenants in search of creative office space. While there will always be companies that want the cachet that a business address in the Loop offers, others realize the strategic advantages of urban, non-CBD locations as a recruiting tool. Live/work/play neighborhoods like River North and the West Loop are growing because high-profile employers want to attract a younger workforce that is drawn to the loft-style offices these neighborhoods can provide. This can be achieved either through ground-up development projects like McDonald’s soon-to-open headquarters at 1035 W. Randolph St., or adaptive reuse projects such as 1K Fulton, a former cold-storage facility that now counts Google among its tenants. Yet as rents in these submarkets continue to climb, office users are starting to ask whether they can get the same space for less money in equally desirable locations. For many, the answer is a resounding “yes.” New opportunities While neighborhoods near the CBD such as River West and Pilsen have benefitted from this office “ripple effect,” Chicago’s recently rezoned North Branch Industrial Corridor is perhaps the most alluring and uncharted territory …