JLL Lists One-Third of Its Chicago HQ for Sublease
"The way we work has changed, flexibility is here to stay," firm says.
JLL is reducing its footprint at its Chicago headquarters by more than 30%, joining an expanding list of businesses that are downsizing their office space in response to hybrid work patterns.
The company is listing its space on the 47th and 48th floors of the Aon Center, a box-shaped skyscraper overlooking Millennium Park at 200 East Randolph Street, CoStar reported.
The brokerage is subleasing 61K SF of its 202K SF headquarters space in the 83-story tower, which is anchored by Aon and KPMG, who have 640K SF and 307K SF in the tower, respectively. The Aon Center is the fourth-tallest building in the skyline of the Windy City.
“While the way we work has changed, and flexibility is here to stay, the office remains central to reinforce culture, drive collaboration and innovation and enable professional growth,” a JLL spokesperson said in a statement sent to Crain’s Chicago Business.
“Just as we’re helping clients with their workplace transformations, we’re doing the same at our own JLL offices that remain a central hub for where our people work each day,” the statement continued.
“Following a detailed analysis and feedback from JLL employees of how our Chicago headquarters at the Aon Center is being used, we identified opportunities to optimize our workspace and bring our teams closer together, which has resulted in a decision to sublease a portion of our office space.”
In April, Peter Caruso, managing director, Brokerage, at JLL’s Chicago office told GlobeSt. that the 2.8M SF building was “barely at 50%” of occupancy.
“It’s three days a week. There’s a pretty good lunch crowd on Friday, but then it just dies. There’s no happy hour on Friday,” Caruso told us in April. “There are only a couple of businesses open in our building. I can complain until I’m blue in the face for more of them to open.”
Despite the extra space at the Aon Center, Chicago’s office market got a much-needed shot in the arm in the second quarter—reporting the first net positive absorption after 10 consecutive quarters in the red.
Net absorption totaled 96K SF in Chicago, and all of this positive activity involved Class A buildings, according to the latest market report from Colliers. Class B and C office assets continue to struggle, the report said.
While office availability reached a record high of 28% in Q2 2023, office vacancy decreased slightly to 22%.
“It is anticipated that availability and vacancies will continue to rise before the year is out. However, the optimistic view is that the [largest] consolidations may be behind us,” Colliers said.
Available office space continues to increase in Chicago’s Central Business District, with more than 1.1M SF of additional space put on the market in the second quarter.
“Absorption is not expected to continue to trend significantly positive for the remainder of 2023,” Colliers’ outlook projected.