“Chicago is where Walgreens began as a single drugstore in 1901, and expanding our downtown presence will help us retain and attract the best talent to continue developing our digital and technology capabilities,” says Alex Gourlay, president of Walgreens.

Walgreens already employs more than 3,500 people in the City of Chicago, where it operates 136 drugstores. The company has a total of 8,175 drugstores.

“Chicago and Walgreens have a long and shared history of innovation and ingenuity,” says Mayor Emanuel. “That history makes Chicago the perfect city for Walgreens to locate 300 jobs and make an investment in its future.”

CHICAGO—The migration of suburban firms into the CBD continues. Walgreens and Mayor Rahm Emanuel said yesterday that the convenience store giant will establish a new technology center at its existing downtown Chicago office and bring in another 300 workers. The group will be a mix of new hires and relocations from its suburban Deerfield location, company officials say. The expansion will double the number of employees working at Sullivan Center, located at 36 S. Wabash Ave.

In recent years, several suburban giants, including McDonald's and ConAgra, decided to pick up stakes and move their headquarters into the CBD. But so far, Walgreens appears to be following another popular strategy, in which a suburban company establishes a downtown satellite office that handles many tech chores. That way, it can attract the young, tech-savvy employees needed to run the operation, a group that largely prefers an urban lifestyle, all without disrupting the lives of the bulk of its workforce.

Walgreens has already begun building out its new space, which will soon host its retail pharmacy technology team, and the digital, mobile and e-commerce tech teams that currently work there.

Designed by famed architect Louis Sullivan and completed in 1904, the one million square foot center was home to the Carson Pirie Scott department store for more than a century. Today it is a modern office building both LEED Certified and Wired Certified. The New York-based developer 601W is set to buy the office space for about $175 million.

“Chicago is where Walgreens began as a single drugstore in 1901, and expanding our downtown presence will help us retain and attract the best talent to continue developing our digital and technology capabilities,” says Alex Gourlay, president of Walgreens.

Walgreens already employs more than 3,500 people in the City of Chicago, where it operates 136 drugstores. The company has a total of 8,175 drugstores.

“Chicago and Walgreens have a long and shared history of innovation and ingenuity,” says Mayor Emanuel. “That history makes Chicago the perfect city for Walgreens to locate 300 jobs and make an investment in its future.”