That would be a great get!

I was unfortunately out of town during the CAF Open House last Oct, but would have loved to have been able to join for the OPO tour and seeing these recent inside pictures of the spiral staircase/hot tube (haha) has me thinking that it might be possible to arrange some time to get in to check out the building. Any advice on how I might go about setting something up like that?

^ I was thinking that the other day... I keep waiting for a A/E/C or CRE industry event, but I haven't seen anything, at least in the last 9 months.

The CAF open house was limited to the lobby space (which is stunning, BTW) and not a tour. There was a tantalizing glimpse through the wall into what was little other than a construction zone at that point, but that was it.

The north lobby is open to the public, but you pretty much gotta know a guy to go anywhere else until base building completion, which is sometime around September I think.

Perhaps this had been mentioned previously, but the public "Lobby" we're referring to is not even the actual lobby. It's essentially the foyer. The lobby with elevator access and amenities for tenants is located in the "middle" of the building, through the temp partition in the north "foyer". I will tell you it will be insane. Jaw dropping. It's yuuuge, wide open space, a two or three level atrium, 50+ feet up to the deck, with massive escalators criss-crossing.

Amazing news coming out of OPO!

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/joe-...go-real-estate

Verifone signs at OPO
 

Silicon Valley firm signs West Loop lease

The Real Deal

Verifone inked a lease for an entire floor in a West Loop office building. The maker of point-of-sale payment technologies will take 27,000 square feet on the 11th floor of 601W Companies’ 550 West Jackson Street. That will be double its current space at 300 South Wacker Drive. Verifone was represented in the lease negotiations by Colliers International’s Andrew Gooliak, Nick Polsky, Romy Zeid and Evan Djikas. 601W recently launched a $12.5 million overhaul of the building

BisNow

Verifone is on the hunt for engineering talent, and like an increasing number of firms, believes downtown Chicago is the place to find it. The Silicon Valley-based provider of point-of-sale payment technologies agreed to lease the entire 11th floor of 550 West Jackson in Chicago, a total of 27K SF and more than double its current space at 300 South Wacker Drive. “Their goal is to hire about 150 engineers by next year and build a terminal engineering team here,” Colliers International’s Andrew Gooliak said. Along with colleagues Nick Polsky, Romy Zeid and Evan Djikas, he represented the company in lease negotiations. “We began with a simultaneous search in the O’Hare submarket and downtown, and they determined that a downtown presence better aligned with their hiring strategy,” he added.

^ Good news of course, but correct me if I'm wrong; 550 W Jackson is not the OPO and this agreement has nothing to do with the OPO.

I was going to say there is no way 27,000 SF is a full floor of the OPO.

Geez I wondering why I was the first to post a 48 hour old annct....:shrug: The 601 company is what threw me..

27,000 SF is a corner office at OPO. :yes:

At 2.8 Million sq feet across 14 floors, you're talking roughly 200,000 sq. feet (or a building the size of 145 S. Wells) per floor. Hard to believe half that space is already spoken for.

You can see where they cut out a section of the 2nd floor slab to make the giant atrium in this video at 0:48.

https://vimeo.com/269231549


There's some quick pans of renders in that area here as well:
https://vimeo.com/287470483

^They've even knocked the logo out of the park!

Can't wait for that Meadow

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/comm...in-post-office

Shocked no one has posted this

Just needed the Baby Boomers to finally retire and the first wave of Millennials to take their place as decision-makers, and we get some very urban, creative development. :)

Cboe nears deal to move HQ to Old Main Post Office

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/comm...in-post-office

I do love that Gen Xers always are forgotten about. But yes, Millennials are now well into their 30s, so it's only a matter of time before the old guard's ways are altered

Damn....that 2nd video....Damn

Not to sidetrack the thread, but 85 really doesn’t feel like Gen X has had such a significant impact culturally or otherwise as the generations before or after them. Maybe it’s every other generation that does.

And thinking about it, I’m a Millennial (technically), or an “old Millennial” in my 30s, and my parents are Boomers. Generation X was quite literally skipped over, as a function of my father being an older dad. If I had kids I’d be an older dad as well and there would be no Generation Z.

Gen X is who paved the way for the current iteration of the revival of cities

You guys are enjoying the fruits of our labor. Cities were much more rough around the edges in the 90s when our generation was starting to live in them.

It's amazing how quickly this is leasing up for a 2.5mil ft2 building. The updated estimated cost for rehabbing the OPO is up to $900 MILLION! I'm really glad this masterpiece is getting a new life and businesses are flocking to it, but for that price, someone could build a 1000ft+ office tower in the West Loop near Union Station. I know people have been saying that Chicago will never see a supertall office tower again, but the HQ relocations and Chicago's western shifting CBD might say otherwise in the future.

Thoughts?

Wow, this is going to be another whole Merchandise Mart on the river full of workers when it opens! It's really going to energize this section of the southwest loop! The area south of it reminds me of the west loop in 2006 with sleepy low slung industrial buildings and surface lots. Maybe it will start a boom in that area soon. It looks amazing, I would love to work here.

Sorry if someone answered before, but is the roof garden going to be open to the public?

I think it depends on how fast the west loop fills up and whether the city will expand zoning for office buildings beyond the west loop. If commercial building is restricted to the current areas I can see a boom of supertalls in the next cycle or two.

The Post Office is already a block away from Union Station, it couldn't be more closer unless it was on top of it.
I think the initial idea was that it was going to cost $600 million for the renovation. Where did they say it's $900 million now? I think this is still alot cheaper than building a new construction supertall office building of that size. After this fills up, I think there would be alot more construction in the area a few years later if the economy is still doing ok.

There is still quite a bit of room in the west loop between the Kennedy and the river for 50ish floor office towers with 1M-1.5M square feet plus. I sincerely doubt new office supertalls are going to be realistic anytime soon.

They never will be. This isn't Manhattan, we don't have the land constraints to justify office supertalls on purely financial grounds; they're too inefficient. We have 4 office supertalls in Chicago. At least two of those supertalls were built as corporate vanity projects (for Sears and Standard Oil). All four were built in a different era when budgets allowed far more lavish buildings and tenants were willing to pay a premium to be in one of the tallest buildings.

Today, tenants are paying a premium to be in Fulton Market; they couldn't care less how tall their building is, so developers put up midrises that are super efficient and relatively inexpensive to build. There's also a steady stream of new buildings along Wacker and the South Branch for successful, more conservative companies (law firms, banks, etc) - these are taller because the land is more expensive, but still top out in the 700-800' sweet spot.

If we did get another only office supertall, it would be one via technicality with a spire like the last two

By "anytime soon" I really mean basically within my likely lifetime. I always hesitate to say never but even in NYC 900-1000 footer office buildings are very much the exception and not the rule. Another era of big corporate vanity towers could come again but I don't see any signs of it right now.

Fulton Market tenants want footage in that neighborhood and want it fast. You are correct that tall doesn't really enter into the calculus. I'm totally fine with a nice midrise office district that gives over to nightlife/hospitality after work and on the weekend with a smattering of for-rent residential.

I am curious to see if the strong leasing at OPO will influence the city to revisit the DS zoning to the south in the near-ish future.

Helicopter was lifting waterproofing rolls and Geofoam for the rooftop garden yesterday. I was giving an architecture river tour and I just quit talking as all the passengers on my boat watched the skyhook.

Given that they're lifting from a staging area directly adjacent to the building, I'm puzzled why they don't just use a temporary hand-assembled derrick instead of paying for the big Sikorsky. I mean you could bring up the Geofoam with a couple of helium balloons.

Chicago | Main Post Office by Harry Carmichael, on Flickr

Chicago | Main Post Office by Harry Carmichael, on Flickr

Wow I'm in love! Gorgeous. And the logo (http://www.post433.com/) they're going with too.

gotta love it^

600W has done a great job with this building. It'll be intriguing to see how they decide to develop all the other lots they own by there.

Thought you hated "trickle down service jobs in the core"?

I heard through grapevine...(cant reveal sources but pretty solid) ..that another fairly large lease (around 200k) will be announced to the tenant list in the building in near future...unfortunately it will not be an expansions of square footage but a downsize of a loop office (similiar to what many law firms have done) from what i heard. So not best for overall downtown Chicago office market since its just a shuffle move but its good for OPO.

Uber confirms huge Old Main Post Office lease

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/comm...t-office-lease

^ I posted this news at the Chicago Economy Thread as well.

This is fantastic news not only for the OPO, but it bolsters the growing narrative of Chicago being an important center for these huge tech behemoths.

Does anyone know whether there will be any prominent signage for the anchor tenants?

I think it would be good advertising for the city if there were signs for Uber or Walgreens above the Eisenhower. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to diminish the beauty of the building itsel. Something clean and simple may do the trick.

I really wish given the tens of thousands of people working in this building that they would simply tunnel into the mezz level of the CTA blue line at Clinton on the east side of the station and have a walkway go one block directly east into the old post office. Seems so straightforward to me, especially with 290 above this site and not having to deal with going through an existing building.

While they're at it have the same pedway go directly north and tie right into Union Station.

A-freaking-men. It would seem with the new BMO building, OPO, and Union Station upgrades there would certainly be enough potential foot traffic to warrant it.

IIRC, this had been discussed as a possibility. I'm not sure where, if anywhere, the city and landlord are on it.

If you check out The Telos Group's website they have a rendering with one of those vertical 'monument signs' facing the river. Oddly enough none of the other renderings showing that riverfront park includes it, so it might still be a work in progress.

http://www.telosgroupllc.com/wp-cont...or-600x400.jpg

Is it possible that this thing could be fully filled within a year of ending final construction?

If so wow what a winner investment this was.

How much space is left btw, still over a million sq feet I suspect.

^ What's crazy is that this was the most vexxing adaptive re-use 'problem' in Chicago for such a long time......industry insiders had virtually thrown their hands up. I remember when there was some sort of 'call for concepts' re what to do with the great albatross. One idea floated was actually to turn it into a mausoleum!

And it's in the process of turning into an incredible redevelopment success - as office space. What a success story.

I mean, how can this NOT spur a tremendous amount of development around the post office. Think of all the people that will be there...

Seriously. House of Bombay just closed on Van Buren unexpectedly and I thought, that sucks. They might have benefitted from the future influx of employees just 1 block southeast.

Between the food options at the Post Office and the future food hall at Union Station, there will definitely be no shortage of lunch options in the area.

I wonder how long we'll have to wait to lose that holiday inn...

Here is the list they have signed so far:

1. Walgreen (6/18/2018) 200000 sf,
2. Ferrara Candy (11/2/2018) 60000 sf
3. Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (1/9/2019) 47000 sf
4. AbelsonTaylor (2/22/2019) 85000 sf
5. Home Chef (4/22/2019) 75000 sf
6. 84.51, 57000 sf
7. Uber (8/19/2019) 463000 sf

That's 987000 sf

Three are still under discussion

• Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago 125000 sf
• Cisco Systems 130000 sf
• CBOE 175000 sf

The three add up 430000 sf

They have 2.5 million sf for lease. So provided that the above three finalize the lease, that will leave just a bit over 1 million sf remaining. According to news in June, they were well ahead of their schedule in finding tenants, so they had set up a new goal to lease 75% by the end of this year. With several high profile tenants, it's showing good momentum. I think they can easily reach or even surpass the goal.