CHICAGO—Sterling Baybegan buying up and renovating properties in the Fulton Market neighborhood about four years ago when the city decided to construct a Green Line El stop there, and has just unveiled Fulton West, its latest development project. Sterling Bay acquired the former MarchFirst Inc. site at 1332 W. Fulton in January 2014, along with a few other nearby office buildings, and its tremendous success in attracting Google and others to its mammoth 1KFulton project at 1000 W. Fulton has helped inspire the plan to transform the new site into a speculative office building with nine-stories and 290,000-square-feet.
“Strengthening demand and strong market fundamentals in the office sector were the drivers for launching this project,” says principal Andy Gloor. “Although spec building has all but disappeared following the economic downturn, we feel the time is right to build.”
The information technology company WhittmanHart, which later became MarchFirst, originally began developing the site during the 1990s Internet boom. The company wanted to transform the neighborhood into a high-tech office hub, but the bursting of the dot.com bubble left an empty and unused four-story concrete structure on the site.
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
