Walgreens HQ relocation or just a big office that's not HQ?

Unclear, but it sounded like quite a bit of space

That's cool - I hope it's the HQ and also a lot of workers . But even if it's just a big office of hundreds of workers, then that's also good. Would be an interesting office set up - we moved 2 years ago to a building with high ceilings, very open, etc as a high performance space. It's worked out well and I would definitely never go back to the old way if I didn't have to.

Do you have any info on the purchase of the parking lot adjacent and west of the Holiday Inn too?

Yeah, it sounded like 200-300K for Walgreens. Nothing on that lot though. I wish I did.

^ That's a ton of jobs.

United just moved their HQ though, I would be surprised if they moved it again. Also, like I said I hope it's somebody else. An out of town company would be nice

United has looked at the Post Office. They are looking to consolidate and move some of their suburban offices downtown. So they would maintain their current HQ.

This.

While having Walgreens move downtown would be fantastic (and probably will at some point in the near future), poaching an HQ from another city would be even better news. It would bring jobs to the metro that were not already here, send a message that IL is not a complete economic basket case (debatable), and would be another line item on our Amazon HQ2 resume.

I was under the impression that they basically had nothing left in the suburbs and everything was already consolidated at Sears. Is that wrong then?

Not sure, but maybe jobs from Houston are involved.

I heard Walgreens was going there as well. They were also considering 625 W Adams among other locations but decided to go with the OPO.

Ditto. I heard something in the 300,000 SQF range, still will maintain a big presence in Deerfield.

Wow, all these rumors but no actual announcement? I hope it’s a HQ.

Anyhow, sounds like we can cross HQ2 off of the list in light of all these rumors

Meh I personally think it's better if they can fill the building with a slate of 10-15 companies in different industries.

I think it's pretty clear at this point that we're getting the Walgreens HQ to the Post Office, Amazon HQ2 to Lincoln Yards, and 5k new Google employees to the north end of Fulton Market. ;)

Maybe UA was asked to vacate the Sears Tower for someone?

Their move into Sears already consolidated most of the offices they had scattered around. They have about 4,400 people in Sears on 16 floors currently (about 800,000+ square feet). Other than that United only has employees at their O'Hare operations and at a Reservation Center nearby. The Reservation Center isn't likely to move given they just spent money on it and the lease for the site is absurdly low with 10 years remaining (about $12,500 a year for something like 20 acres).

Yeah that's not the case at all. UA is safely ensconced in their current offices in the Tower. Although Blackstone did force the food vendors to vacate while the spaces they occupied are demolished and renovated...in the middle of winter.

It seems every week there is another prime candidate for this building. First it was Walgreens, then Amazon, then Google, now Apple. The timing here couldn't be any better for 601w.

LOL! Why? There's a rumor that states 200K - 300K sq ft of space for someone like Walgreens. The entire thing is 2.7 million sq ft of available space. Why would that mean you could possibly cross HQ2 off the list? Even if they filled up 100% of the space, they'd still be way short and have to build at least a few new buildings anyway to get to their ultimate goal. So, I respectfully disagree with your assessment

Lmao! That is an unbelievably idealistic take on the situation, and I love it! But what about Apple's 2nd HQ?



Apple to build 2nd campus, hire 20,000 in $350B pledge

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...in-350b-pledge

And don't forget about the entire Pentagon moving to those old Quartermaster Corps buildings on Pershing Road . . .

^ Only the Pentagon? That wont fill even half the square footage out there!

Just to get your blood pumping, I'm pretty certain it's gonna be Walgreens. . .

Just a feeling, or is this something you heard through the grapevine from someone in the know?

I think it would help walgreens attract a different crowd of potential workers. Their site now is very suburban and really out of the way unless you are visiting it from ohare directly

Definitely. A couple years ago I helped organize a panel for college students of tech/analytical workers from various firms in the area, and the Walgreens guy basically spent half his time explaining how it’s not that bad in the suburbs.

Yeah my fiancee looked at jobs out there and noped any and all options in the area after the first interview.

Instead she took a new job at 333 W Wacker which is 15 less minutes of walking each way on her commute. She's no die hard urbanist or anything, she just has better things to do with her time than commute and likes having huge dining options for both lunch and after work. The second she saw Deerfield she was like "no thanks", she didn't grow up here and has basically never left the city since she moved here so I think that was a bit of an eye opener to her.

Of course I'll be sure to try to get in her office ASAP to start providing Wolf Point updates!

@Leftofcenter Grapevine. 100k sq ft at least, which surprised me because I figured they’d need more space than that.

Number of workers? Sounds to me like at least 300-400.. My floor in NYC is 125K sq ft and I think we have 500-700 people on it now...

My employer has our space fitted out as an open floorplan (no private offices, shared spaces & seating) which accommodates about 900 employees on a 100,000 square feet of space.

Unfortunately 100k SF of Walgreens doesn't get me excited, that's like 7% of their Deerfield footprint. It's basically one floor of this building.

Sounds tight. We have an open floor plan too and to my knowledge less people than 900. We are adding another floor or two this year too of similar size.

Well then, that's pretty damn exciting! I hope that the move is announced soon. I'm sure Rahm has drilled into the Amazon reps heads about Chicago being the relocation capital of the country. A move like this would add some more heft to that crown.

I agree 100k is not much. I had heard they were looking at 2-3 floors. 200-300K SF of space.

We'll have to wait and see.

^ It could be the executive headquarters, though. Although I would still like to see more jobs than that.

IF Walgreen's really does relocate to downtown, what major HQs are left in the burbs?

Allstate, Baxter, Abbot, Abbvie are a few that come to mind.

Could be. I'd rather have the workers that take up 200-300K sf of office than a 100K SF HQ though.

Mondolez, Discover, Takeda (All Walgreen neighbors)

Discover would be a great candidate to move to the city. All the major financial companies in Chicago are in the Loop, to be near the CME/CBOE and to each other to share the employee pool. TransUnion, BMO/Harris, Northern Trust, OCC, etc.

Couldnt 100k be a test run for future? Or do you think this will be sold out by the time of opening. I've seen it a bunch of times, in highrises especially, but renting 1 floor turns into 3 or 4 floors the following 3-5 years. Depending how they and thier clients like it.

Sure. I prefer they just start big, even if the HQ stays in Deerfield.

When Walgreens announced opening the office at The Sullivan Center, Crains reported that they have a 16 building campus with 6,500 employees. Anyone knows if that is accurate?

It starts with a trickle.

Discover has about 4,000.

Most of Discover's footprint in Riverwoods is back-office stuff, I believe. Customer service, transaction processing, etc (although they apparently have these in Phoenix and SLC too). Not stuff that needs top-dollar downtown office space. If they do move downtown, I assume it would only be a handful of departments plus the C-suite.

Northern Trust admittedly put their back-office in a Loop-adjacent location on Canal, but I don't think anyone will ever get land that cheap again so close to the Metra stations.

Also worth noting that both Discover and Allstate started as units of Sears before being spun off into Fortune 500 companies in their own right. For anyone that doubts why we need Amazon (the new Sears), this is why.

No. Riverwoods is all corporate functions. No customer service.

I came across 2 webcams that are set up in the post office. They both seem to be offline and I'm not sure if they will come back up.

But you can still watch time lapses of the gutting of the inside of the building.

https://public.earthcam.net/jll#/Old...K%201/View%201

I heard today that United has been actively looking at a move to the Post Office because they have already outgrown their current space in Willis Tower.

Sorry Amazon, you missed out, no space left in Chicago...

Except for the giant brownfield sites we can offer in all directions from downtown...

The entire corporate HQ of United and Walgreens shouldn't come close to filling the OPO. Especially if Walgreens only plans to move a portion of its Deerfield operations downtown. There will be plenty of space (at least the initial 500,000 sqft in the RFP) for Amazon to start with, and the land around the OPO as well as Union Station expansion project.

If anything, having existing tenants might make the OPO more attractive to Amazon. It can eventually buy out their leases and kick them out as it expands and grows.

This is of course assuming the OPO is Amazon's top prospect in Chicago, which it may or may not be. I frankly don't care where they land, as long as it's within city limits :)

LOL.... the Old Post Office will have 2.7 million square feet of space. Amazon wants up to 8 million square feet. The proposal for the post office never included just the post office. It also includes the Union Station redevelopment as well as some vacant land to build new things on. Kind of ridiculous to throw this out even if it amounts to 500k square ft being taken.