The Southwest Loop Is Getting Hot Again
- jamesmcconnell
- Jun 3, 2019
- 1 min read
Just a few blocks north of the Chicago Fire Department’s Quinn Fire Academy, built on the presumptive DeKoven Street site where Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a kerosene lantern to start the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, real estate development is getting very hot. Developers of new and repurposed massive older buildings in the neighborhood are leasing up space at an accelerating pace.
Two billion dollars of renovations are going on at Union Station, Willis Tower and the Old Main Post Office, attracting a million square feet of new retail and office leases, plus proposed Uber Technologies and Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago leases of an additional 575,000 square feet. Plus, the TIF funded proposed 78 development along the Chicago River’s south branch could add another 13 million square feet of rentable space.
New office tenants in the neighborhood will include, in addition to Uber and the Home Loan Bank, Tyson Foods, pharmaceutical company Walgreens Boots Alliance, and computer retailer CDW. Look for more massive leases as the already signed tenants build out their spaces and move in, boosting demand for food services, more ground floor retail, and other amenities to provide for armies of office occupants.
