CHICAGO—AT&T Illinois has decided to bring another 500 employees to downtown Chicago, according to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and company president Paul La Schiazza. The company plans to pull the employees out of suburban workplaces such as their Hoffman Estates campus and move them into the headquarters at 225 West Randolph St. Although thousands of their employees will remain in the suburbs, AT&T joins a growing number of companies, including Google and Sears, which have increasingly migrated from sprawling suburban campuses to the glass towers and rehabbed historic buildings in the CBD. AT&T currently has about 3,900 employees working in the city.  

"This is an exciting development for AT&T and a big moment for the city of Chicago as well," said Mayor Emanuel. "AT&T sees what so many other companies see -- that the outstanding infrastructure and globally competitive workforce in the city offer a tremendous advantage in the marketplace. We welcome these new jobs to the city and look forward to the company's continued success."

AT&T provides wireless, Wi-Fi, high-speed Internet, voice and cloud-based services. And Michael McKiernan, managing director of Avison Young in the Chicago area, says some companies, especially high-tech ones, have gotten disillusioned with the suburban, campus-style offices once considered cutting edge. “Many of these companies are being forced to run back to the city for the quality labor they need,” including young workers “who aren't going to make the trek out to the 'burbs any more.”

Company officials hint that other changes may be on the way. “This announcement is part of AT&T's Chicagoland Workplace Transformation initiative,” according to a statement, “which recognizes that now more than ever wireless and wired internet technologies allow more people the ability to work flexibly.”

The move also gives Mayor Emanuel another reason to brag. According to the mayor's office, during his term “more than 80 companies have announced job increases in Chicago, including 19 corporate headquarter relocations.”

Suburban landlords may have begun to feel the pressure brought about by these corporate migrations. According to second quarter research just published by Studley, a commercial real estate firm, in the suburban Northwest Corridor “the average class A asking rent posted a sharp 6.9% quarter-on-quarter decline to $19.07-per-square-foot, the lowest average asking rent since the 1990s.”

But some companies, such as Sunstar Americas, Inc., still find suburban, campus-like developments attractive. This summer, the manufacturer bought nearly 80 acres in unincorporated Cook County just north of the I-90 expressway. The town of Schaumburg has agreed to incorporate the land, and Sunstar will soon break ground on a 300,000-square-foot, campus-like headquarters and manufacturing facility that will replace their operations on the city's Northwest Side.