Holy potential watershed moment, Batman!

this could be big.

REALLY BIG.

That's pretty big news! Hope they do it! :)

It doesn't say anything about whether they'd be moving in as-is or waiting for the hypothetical towers.

Keep fingers crossed!

In the meantime, such positive news/foreshadowing about this in Chi-town, and the Hudson Spire in NY entails:

http://37.media.tumblr.com/8b83a39e4...5vsao1_500.gif
:)

Wow - awesome.

I wonder if they'd be looking at moving all their employees downtown (around 3,500 in Deerfield)... The Crain's article said they're looking for 1M SF of space, but their Deerfield campus has about 1.7M.

WOW really 1 million thats more than enough to get the project moving, I wasn't really not expecting any news for a while. Now just forget about the whole train thing and focus on the project please IPD

i know less about this than anybody here, so. . . let me offer my opinion. . .

when i saw this in crain's, i immediately thought of this thread, of course, and the proposed 1,000'er.

however, then i thought maybe they will use the sizable post office or its skeleton to create a sort of urban suburban campus like they already have in deerfield.

i guess it's the sears of pharmacies, so maybe the walgreen tower (shaped like a prescription bottle?) is a possibility.

anyways. . . :cheers:

Ya I just remembered the intial plan meant to re-do the the post office. The article also mention Bill Davies is driving a hard bargain. I wonder if that means he's not open to much change in the project, also I forgot to mention this but whats with Jones Lang were does Booth Hansonn fall in this. Does this mean walgreens is buying the office off of Davies, or is there something I missed.....

All I can say is: LOL.

This is a Holy Shit moment if this actually happens. They would unquestionably go Motorola style and take several of the massive floorplates of the post office to create hyper efficient space like in Merch Mart. These massive old buildings (Montgomery Ward, Merch Mart, Fulton Cold Storage, and now the Post Office) are turning out to be extremely efficient for the modern reality of open plan offices. Because the plates are so big and there are very few interior walls, the loss factors in these buildings are rock bottom which means the tenant gets several percent more usable square feet per rentable square foot.

In addition to the USF bump, they also can cram massive numbers of desks into a wide open floorplate like this. That means higher density plans and lower costs per employee. They also typically go with a low cost loft style buildout which simply involves cleaning and painting the structural elements and then installing new mechanicals which sheds huge amounts of buildout costs, again reducing the cost of moving downtown. All in all it might even be the case that most of the 1.7 million SF in Deerfield is turning into 1 million SF downtown because they are seeing massive efficiency increases. I am sure that the expansion possibilities in the Post Office are also very attractive to them. No major corporations like to be hemmed in which is a major reason why they moved to suburban corporate campuses in the first place. They can go up and out at a site like the Post Office.

This means, for massive companies like Moto or Walgreen, that take multiple full floors, downtown office space in a massive old building like this can actually be as cheap as or cheaper than suburban space. I'm starting to foresee a day where Chicago rue's the loss of the other previously obsolete downtown behemoth buildings because they seem to have become an incredible tool for attracting massive businesses to downtown. There could actually be a day where Merch Mart, Montgomery Ward, and Post Office are all 100% leased. What happens then? Are there other targets out there I am forgetting about?

Wow! Let's hope this happens. It would be great to see something actually go in at the old post office.

Post Office.

I'd feel better if the Post Office owner was more of a known commodity.

This could signal the end of ( at least in metro Chicago ) fortune 500 headquarters in the outer suburban ring, in lieu of downtown.

If this happens,

That

Will be

The

Shit.

@LVDW: Can the Takeda Tower at Ashland/Roosevelt be far behind?

This would be a big fish for Rahm for sure... He needs to be giving the full court press to Walgreens and Bill Davies so they reach a deal.

Sucks for Deerfield; they could try to land a big pharma tenant or do housing on the site, but Walgreens contributed a boatload of tax revenue and demanded relatively little in services. They also lost the Bulls last year, which is too bad... For a suburb, Deerfield is actually pretty nice, unlike say Schaumburg. With all this decline, when will IDOT wise up and stop spending so much money in the suburbs? The Tollway mortgaged billions on the continued expansion of suburban jobs/housing, but I don't see the momentum apart from some odd ducks like Zurich.

Deerfield is wealthy. Maybe not as wealthy as its actual North Shore neighbors but still definitely wealthy. Highland Park, Glencoe, Winnetka, etc. do a pretty great job without any tax revenue from enormous international headquarters. What were those tax dollars supporting I wonder?

Fox Chicago just said that Walgreens has no plans to move into the city.

WELL...... we all know Fox NEVER lies!! anyways...i would much rather them be the major tenant in that new Fifield west loop supertall! 8)

Yeah - the mayor / city manager / whatever is saying that Walgreens assured him that they weren't looking to relocate. Who was Crain's source for the relocation story?

Walgreens Denies Move to South Loop; Fioretti Says it Would Boost Area

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140...uld-boost-area

We were all so excited there for a couple hours when we thought this project had a chance.:sly:

I believe the Crain's reporting more than I believe those ensuing vague denials.

One key thing here is the Main Post Office's proximity to Union Station and also Ogilvie -- the current Walgreens HQ is close to the Milwaukee District North Line, which runs to Union Station. It would ease retention of employees if they were told they'd end up with short commutes to a Metra station somewhere, and then a short (and "happy and healthy") walk to the new HQ. I think this has been a relatively common pattern in recent suburb-to-downtown relocations.

Didn't Sullivan Center get Walgreens internet operations as one of its launch tenants several years back? Presumably those staffers also might relocate to this new HQ.