Jesus, the entire downtown office worker population of a small to mid sized city in just one building. Crazy to think about.

Yep. My floor at work is something like 125,000 sq ft and I think we have around 1000 total people. Now, think about the 25,000 people and think about how many might be living with a significant other. Think of how many have kids. Even if a quarter of those people want to live downtown or close to it, with an average household size of 1.25...that's nearly 8000 people. Now realize how Riverline (or whatever it's called now) is basically across the bridge with something like 3300 total units to be delivered...

Yeah it's pretty mindblowing when you think about it. Now imagine if Amazon chose Chicago and it was something like the 78. Now that's mindblowing LOL.

Guaranteed to keep the real estate boom in the core going. Downtown will barely feel any coming recession.

Considering how high the daytime population around the Post Office will be, it's matter of time until the "Southwest Loop" starts to grow. With the exception of the retail along Canal St, the area is a giant blank slate where developers are allowed to upzone to DX. It would allow for the skyline to venture into new territories

^ Lots of empty lots and low slung warehouse-like buildings in that area that can all be easily redeveloped once land prices start going up. Excellent transportation connections as well, with the Clinton Blue, Union Station, 290 and 90/94 all nearby. Proximity to UIC doesn't hurt, either.

So far, planners have actively discouraged residential from this area (Southwest Loop is so boring, why not O'Learyville?)

I think the planners are working on the notion that downtown needs a lot of service businesses to sustain itself, and everybody benefits if those businesses are close to their downtown customers. Of course, these businesses also occupy a lot of square footage, so even O'Learyville can only hold a handful, UPS being the biggest.

The area also has poor transit, with few connections to the east or west and nothing between the Blue Line at Congress and the #12/18 at Roosevelt. I suppose the 60 could be re-routed through the area instead of taking Harrison.

Allstate is moving bodies out of state, not downtown.

lots of nice renders and old pics




http://www.chicagomag.com/real-estat...ore-and-After/


The Old Main Post

Office: Before and After

For 20 years, the 2.5 million square–foot facility has sat
empty. Soon, it will take shape as a sleek new office building.

"renders"

When will people stop making this mistake? Oof

What an improvement. For 5 years i looked down at that site from my office and thought what horrible greeting that place was as your entered the downtown area. Good stuff Chicago!

No one cares.

Not gonna lie, I sometimes say 'renders' because I know it irritates you. People aren't gonna stop making the mistake. We all know what he's talking about so its best to just say "Thanks for the renders" and call it a day. This is the internet after all. Nobody came for a grammar lecture ;)

Guess I'm just gonna shoot myself then. There's no hope

Got to see the lobby during OHC. It's quite stunning!

https://i.imgur.com/r4QbqxS.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/uIjVnXI.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/bvCGohC.jpg

Raw space under construction behind the lobby. You can see some of the iron structure exposed. Sorry about the glare!
https://i.imgur.com/njLnM19.jpg

Tremendous shots!

Stunning! What a amazing gem. Hope this reno keeps the OPO going for another century. Thanks for the pictures!

Buildings like OPO or merch mart should be around for many more centuries. I would hope this renovation lasts longer than 100 years given how much nicer the infrastructure we build in 2018 is than it was in 1918...

Does anyone know how MM and OPO compare to ESB in terms of SF? Which building is the largest Art Deco building?

I believe

The Mart - 4 mill sf
Old Main - 2.8 mil sf
ESB - 2.5 mill sf

Merch Mart was the largest building on Earth by square footage until the construction of the Pentagon more than a decade later. It remained the largest privately owned building on Earth for a couple of decades...

It is a giant building, like I said earlier, a true pyramid of our age. It has almost as much SF as the Sears tower (which, as I have said before, remains the largest supertall by floor area by a significant margin).

MM is also interesting from the perspective of it's commercial success, for such an immense structure it has been pretty much fully utilized, sought after space since the day it was built.

I recall hearing that the Mart accounted for something like 10% of the total office space in central Chicago when it first opened in 1930. Not sure if this is accurate, but it sounds like it could be believable. Anyone else hear this as well?

I drove under this beauty heading west at dusk tonight and the 5th floor tenant space was lit up like a Christmas tree! Thanks to the massive plate glass windows, you can clearly see all the unique LED fixtures spanning the length of the building. After 20+ years of a dark monolith, seeing it come to life has nearly brought a tear to my eye. I cannot wait for them to complete the additional floors.

It's interesting that the Aon Center is also the 4rd largest office building by floor area in the world just behind the Mart. 3 of the top 4 largest office building by floor area in the world are in Chicago. I wonder why Chicago built all these mega huge single office buildings? It seems like it would be very difficult to fill up that much space when they were built. I'm still curious to see how the Post Office will fill up, although I hope it does since it's an awesome building, and is looking good already with the renovation.

Well... this city used to follow Burnham's spirit in making no small plans. Not saying we are completely straying from his light, but we definitely used to swing for the fences much more

Most of these record-setting buildings were built for industries where Chicago absolutely dominated. Take the OPO for example. Chicago was the king of logistics just before the industry got mechanized. The OPO wasn't an office building, it was a mail sorting facility, and not just for Chicago but for the whole US since long-distance mail flowed by rail at the time. (In most cities you will find the grand old post office next to the train station).

The architects planned for mail volume to grow in the future (which did continue to grow steadily until 2001) but they did not foresee how the USPS would virtually abandon rail and switch to trucking, nor did they foresee the mechanization that would allow more mail to be sorted in less space with fewer workers.

Today there is
A) less mail flowing through Chicago, since the interstate system does not bottleneck at Chicago like the railroads did
B) less mail flowing through Chicago, since the USPS is back down to 1980 levels of mail volume and sinking fast
C) the mail handling that does take place is mostly in the suburbs, where USPS has large facilities close to interstate highways.

Well yes I know the Post Office was originally a big Post Office. I was referring to the Sears, Merchandise Mart, and Aon Center that are in the top 5 largest offices buildings in the world. For the Sears I understand that it was just sheer hubris and make no little plans type of thing. Why was the Aon Center so big? I'm saying lots of other cities have big industries and companies as well, but yet 3 of the top 5 largest offices buildings in the world are in Chicago.

The Mart wasn't originally primarily an office building, and I was always under the understanding that it didn't do well when it opened, which was why Marshall Field sold it for half the cost of construction to the Kennedy's just fifteen years later. Am I incorrect?

Yes, most buildings of this scale suffered immediately after construction. The WTC was massively vacant for a decade after construction despite being a massively subsidized office project offering below market rents.

Merch Mart was, as the name implies, intended to be a giant wholesale market with a pseudo warehouse component to it. That wasn't the best business to deliver a few million feet to in 1930 which I suspect has a lot more to do with Merch Marts early struggles than anything else. The building quickly filled up as the economy recovered in the post war boom years.

Given how successful it has been recently I think it's high time for a full exterior restoration. As beautiful as it is the building suffers from a lot of cracked limestone and terra cotta pieces which will only get worse over time if they aren't replaced. They also removed a good deal of original ornamentation including the Indian chief heads that originally graced the upper floors. A complete restoration would only serve to jack the value of the building up even more.

It's an artifact of two things: one being the structural layout of the city, two being the economics of the city from 1900-1975. Chicago has a much different layout than similar economic centers like NYC during that period, there was a lot more space here and much larger blocks of it. Combine that with the fact that Chicago was leading the way as a center of new business creation and you had a lot of booming companies growing very quickly with very ambitious plans. Standard Oil (Aon) had just as much hubris as Sears. These were companies that were outright dominant during the early 20th century and they had a need for huge blocks of space and assumed they were king of the world. In Standard Oil's case they at one point in time controlled 88% of the oil market in the United States and had to be dissolved as a monopoly. It shouldn't be surprising that such a company would want to anchor and get naming rights to a gargantuan office building larger than pretty much anything else on earth.

Merch mart is another prime example, you had the preeminent retailer in the world at the time deciding to buy an old railyard and building THE wholesale trading hub of North America. When you are that dominant with that kind of wealth you aren't much concerned with making the very last dollar, you can afford to show off and plow money into a white elephant that will act as a legacy for hundreds of years or more. Given how they built with reinforced concrete in the 1920's and it's warehouse use, Merch Mart is likely the biggest "brick shithouse" in the entire city of Chicago. I have a feeling that might be the only thing left standing in the event of a nuclear attack here. The floor plates are probably like 12" of coffered concrete. If you are a measly meat bag human you can at least rely on something like that far outliving you and your descendants basically until no one remembers who is related to you anymore. That's why I described it as a "true pyramid of our age", its one of the few modern era buildings built to last 1,000 years.

Candy anyone?
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/loca...6rYj3OMkGdPV5o

So we attract another suburban company. Good news certainly... now if we can attract more from outside Illinois. Apple just announced big employment plans in several cities, most notably Austin, but Chicago isn’t on the list. With OPO’s big wide open floor plans, seemingly suitable for modern tech industry, hopefully we’re able to gain some noteworthy additions soon (of course Salesforce is good but heading elsewhere along the river).

Oh shit, what drama, White Oak partners announced Ferrara would be moving to 625 w Adams as the first tenant earlier this year:

https://therealdeal-com.cdn.ampproje...-west-adams%2F

Looks like 625 will be staying empty a while longer. Apparently the 20 floor Fifield econobox model no longer works in a world full of Fulton Cold Storages and OPOs...

Plus all the office space put on the market by big tenant moves like Hyatt, DLA, etc into new towers. More of that coming too.

Maybe just convert 625 to apartments or something...

This will be a legit problem for non-riverfront office buildings and just generally the office market. Typical prime tenants are consolidating space per staff while the companies that can are moving towards either "creative" loft offices or flagship prime buildings (BOA, Salesforce, BMO, etc).

Mediocre traditional offices will struggle to rent while older half empty buildings will need to seriously think about how to re position.

I think some of these will just need to lower the rents. Buildings like 625 may go bankrupt and get restructured by a buyer taking lower rents, stealing the second half of the tenant base from a half vacant building on Lasalle that cant replace their big bank/law firm tenant. 625 is still a better option and if its cheap, companies will take it.

625 W. Adams has been almost completely leased by CDW.

Somehow I totally forgot about CDW. I'll blame it on the lack of sunlight.

There is a video on the site I haven’t seen yet. Maybe not a lot of new info, but that rooftop is EVERYTHING.

http://www.post433.com

Ferrara Candies moving in. 400+ Folks

Anyone know what's happening to the candy factory in Forest Park? Is it staying?

I could be wring but I think production is staying in Forest Park (instead of moving to some random industrial park in the far burbs)

It's premature to say that model is dead. 333 N Green and shortly thereafter 330 N Green are both set up for success by Sterling Bay even while competing with the larger format offices like 110 Wacker, Union Station, and WPS. I would say the leasing of 625 could have been executed better.

They can go condo.

Adding another small tenant

https://www.chicagotribune.com/busin...109-story.html

shrug: no gain..

It's 1/4 of the space Walgreens has in the building, so not too small of a gain.

This puts the Old Post Office at roughly 325,000 square feet rented out of 2.5 million total.

A patchwork of smaller tenants doesn't sound like a bad thing. It may take time but I don't see this trend of corporate relocations to the CBD reversing any time soon. And it sure beats having the thing sit in disrepair for another decade.

Travel along I-88 into the burbs. There are plenty of office parks for the OPO to steal from in the future.

To tell you the truth, I had no idea the CMAP would take up nearly that much space!

New tenant for OPO
 

Real Deal: Ad Agency signs for 87K sq ft.
A fourth tenant signed a lease to move into 601W Companies’ redeveloped Old Main Post Office, meaning about 15 percent of the 2.8-million-square-foot complex is now accounted for.

Chicago-based ad agency AbelsonTaylor signed the 15-year lease for about 89,000 square feet in the massive building, according to the Chicago Tribune. The firm will move at least 100 employees from its existing offices at 33 West Monroe Street.

The Tribune story says that space allows for 100 employee expansion with 50 coming on board in 2019.

If I read that right, that's an eventual 200 employees? That's an extremely generous 450 square feet per employee.