CHICAGO—Midwest Property Group will break ground by January on a 32,000-square-foot mixed-use development at 131 W. Hubbard on the corner of LaSalle St. in River North. The developer has tapped downtown Chicago specialist and Newmark Grubb Knight Frank senior managing director Matt Ward to lease the top two floors for office or showroom tenants.
“I've done a lot of real estate work in River North over the years,” Ward tells GlobeSt.com, “and the neighborhood has never been hotter than it is today.” And while the area used to be the epitome of cool and most attractive to tech firms, he adds that it is now completely diversified and home to co-working spaces, law firms, and many other sectors.
The two-floor space totals 22,000-square-feet and will feature 12-foot ceilings designed for a showroom or loft office. Ward expects that the transformation of the nearby Merchandise Mart from a collection of major showrooms into a tech center will open up some opportunities for 131 Hubbard. “A lot of folks from there have moved down to set up shop on the south side, but some want to stay in River North. We've got some very mainstream companies looking at this space for that use.” In addition, NGKF will take looks at tech firms and others. “We are casting a wide net.”
A new tenant at the Hubbard building will have a separate ground-floor lobby space and entrance with the opportunity for signage and street visibility. MPG currently plans to have a restaurant on the remainder of the ground floor. The developers will begin construction by January with completion in February 2016.
“We've already talked to a number of great tenants,” Ward says, and hopes to have the building “leased up before it is completed.”
Ward, who joined NGKF in June, is also heading up the leasing for the nearby 20 W. Kinzie St., a 17-story, 385,000-square-foot office building, and is working to refill the roughly 200,000-square-feet of space Google will vacate next year. “No leases are signed yet, but we are in very substantive talks with a number of companies.”
Handling this task helps give Ward an overview of the neighborhood's prospective tenants and keeps him optimistic about finding users for 131 Hubbard. River North boasts the lowest office vacancy rate in downtown Chicago, he points out, just 9.6% according to the latest stats from NGKF. “There are very few good blocks of space in River North, which is why we're building this building.”
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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.
