CHICAGO—The vast amount of shadow space in the city's CBD is on the mind of many landlords, but the managers of 203 N. LaSalle St. say their building is ready for a big vacancy that will appear on several of its floors next year. DLA Piper will leave more than 300,000 square feet, and M & J Wilkow, Ltd., which manages the tower for Sumitomo Corp. of Americas, just announced that the firm has completed a $15 million renovation that brought in all the amenities that today's tenants expect in a class A tower.

“It's a huge block of contiguous space,” Jack O'Brien, executive vice president with the Telos Group, the building's leasing agent, tells GlobeSt.com. “That's a big opportunity in the market today.” Furthermore, “it's one block from River North and there is a full service elevated train stop that opens right into the lobby,” which helps make it unbeatable from a transportation standpoint.

O'Brien has a good idea of who might occupy these spaces. “The tenants that ultimately come in and fill up 203 N. LaSalle will be tech-forward companies,” he says. This could include corporations like McDonald's that, while not tech firms in the narrow sense, do want the kind of open floor designs that the building's 45,000 square foot floor plates can provide.