CHICAGO—The suburban office market saw a decline in leasing activity since last year, but many portions of the sector, especially class A properties in select submarkets, remain quite popular with users, according to a new report from Cushman & Wakefield. And other hopeful signs are also evident, including a decline in the number of firms moving their headquarters from the suburbs into the CBD.

“I think you'll still see companies open offices in the city, but maintain a presence in the suburbs,” Christopher Cummins, a Rosemont, IL-based executive director with C&W, tells GlobeSt.com. The recent decision of Walgreens to expand its Downtown Chicago tech operations, while keeping the bulk of its workforce at its Deerfield, IL headquarters, was just the latest example of that phenomenon.

There has been 2.9 million square feet of suburban leasing activity this year, the majority within class A properties, and a drop from 3.4 million square feet during the same period in 2016, C&W finds. However, “in the past six months, we've seen an increase in activity,” Cummins says, “although up to that point it was pretty slow.”