Tech Firm Gets “Customer-Driven” Space

CHICAGO—The health of the downtown office market continues to improve as more companies from outlying areas discover the amenities and conveniences available in the CBD. As reported in GlobeSt.com, Newark element14, an electronics and engineering firm, just this week became the latest company to make the move after spending 34 years in Ravenswood on the North Side. And Tom Hudak, the president of sales and marketing tells us that the new 65,000-square-foot space on the 22nd and 23rd floors in 300 S. Riverside Plaza will transform how Newark’s 350 employees work together.

“We’ve got everybody in here comfortably,” he says. “But the large floor plate means we can have 50,000-square-feet on one floor, and from a collaborative standpoint and our ability to solve problems for our customers, having almost everybody on one floor is a strategic advantage.” In Ravenswood, the company owned a building with 135,000-square-feet, but although it was cheap, it also had several floors and “was like a honeycomb; there were people in the building that you didn’t see for weeks.”