CHICAGO—The growing penchant companies have for urban offices has been energizing the CBD for years, but more recently it began creating entirely new submarkets on the downtown's periphery. In its latest market beat report, MBRE says that the area surrounding Goose Island on the Near Northwest Side will soon attract so many emerging tech tenants that it should be considered a separate submarket.

The Goose Island corridor has even less office space than River West, the neighborhood between the I-90/94 Kennedy Expressway and Ashland Ave. where Google has chosen to locate its new regional headquarters and which MBRE began tracking as a separate submarket this year, but the level of interest and activity around the island means it can no longer be lumped in with River North.

"We're going to start tracking it and identifying it as a legitimate office market," David P. Kimball, an assistant vice president for MBRE, tells GlobeSt.com. Both Goose Island and River West still look small when compared to the massive towers in the CBD, he adds. "There is not a ton of data to track, but there is a lot going on."