A food services company that operates a market in Sterling Bay's 1.7M SF River North office tower in Chicago sued the landlord last month, seeking reimbursement for build-out improvements in an early termination of a 10-year lease that will enter its third year at the end of 2023.

Quest Food Management, which operates Farehouse Market in River North, says it's owed more than $515K because it has a clause in its lease that guarantees $2.5M in annual sales, which it says it hasn't come close to achieving due to the "vast reduction" in the number of office workers in the building.

Sterling Bay responded in a letter to the tenant noting that Sterling Bay subsidized the market's operations between June 2020 and September 2022 at a cost of $430,000 and abated $142K in rent the landlord could have collected, according to a report in TheRealDeal.