Flashpoint Academy was represented in the transaction by Daniel Arends, principal and member of Colliers Bennett & Kahnweiler Inc.'s Office Advisory Group. CB Richard Ellis represented owner Harbor Group International. Flashpoint Academy has signed a 15-year lease for space on the fifth and sixth floors. Lease incentives included a tenant improvement package, abatements and a "very low" lease rate. Arends could not disclose the lease rate but he says the asking rate for the lower six floors of the building is between $25 per sf, gross to $26 per sf, gross.

The space will have classrooms, production facilities and a recording studio. The academy decided to lease space in the 22-story building, in part, because the school will be able to have its own entrance and its own address of 28 N. Clark St. giving the school "a door that students would recognize," Arends says. The academy also liked the centrality of the location, and that it was near train stops and the retail in the area. The center, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was constructed in 1914 and was one of the last buildings designed by famed Chicago architect Daniel Burnham.

An affiliate of Harbor Group International LLC of Norfolk, VA purchased the historic 22-story Burnham Center in March for $79.5 million. In an interview with GlobeSt.com then, Harbor president Richard Litton Jr. he said he planned on using tenant improvement allowance packages to lease the lower six floors, which have much larger floor plates than the rest of the building. Litton told GlobeSt.com a lease of more than 50,000 sf of the lower floors had been signed that would bring the occupancy rate from 83% to 94%.