ORLANDO—In 2009, Sterling Bay's River Center was a rather drab office complex across the street from Ogilvie Transportation Center in Chicago, mostly noticeable for the clock tower that tops it. The brand of the building wasn't great with a 20% vacancy rate and smaller tenants who took up half a floor or less, making it labor intensive to lease and manage.

As if matters weren't difficult enough, one of the office building's largest tenants, HNTB Corp, announced it was relocating to 1 South Wacker Drive. It was a much more stylish building—until River Center decided to rebrand itself. There's a lesson here for older office buildings everywhere.

"As a brand, River Center was undifferentiated, a kind of larger version of the small-tenant office buildings on Wabash Avenue," Tom Silva, principal of Silva, tells GlobeSt.com. "Then Sterling Bay bought it and undertook a stellar rebranding."