Gensler moving local office to Carson’s building

(Crain’s) — The architecture firm Gensler is moving its Chicago office to the historic Carson Pirie Scott & Co. building on State Street, which is currently being renovated and converted into smaller retail stores on the lower levels and office space above.

Gensler plans to move in July to the building at 1 S. State St., now dubbed the Sullivan Center, which is being redeveloped by Joseph Freed & Associates LLC. Gensler is also the retail architect for the Block 37 mixed-use project on State Street, which Freed is now building.

Gensler’s Chicago office has about 225 employees and currently occupies about 40,000 square feet spread over four floors in the Inland Steel building at 30 W. Monroe St. The San Francisco-based firm has signed a 10-year lease at Sullivan Center for about 55,000 square feet on the third floor, says Lamar Johnson, the managing principal who has headed the Chicago office since it opened 10 years ago.

“It’s going to be fabulous space,” Mr. Johnson says. “For an architecture firm it’s pretty important and cool to be in a Louis Sullivan building. That architectural history and legacy is something that really appeals to us.”

Of course, Gensler is moving to one of the city’s architectural gems while leaving another in the Inland Steel Building, which was designed by the Chicago firm Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP.

Mr. Johnson says one major benefit the Sullivan Center provided was the ability to put all of the firm’s employees on one floor.

“Being on four floors was hard on us organizationally because we didn’t get to see each other all the time,” he says.

Just 10 years ago when he moved here from Denver to open Gensler’s Chicago office, Mr. Johnson recalls wondering whether the firm would ever be able to fill one of the 12,000-square-foot floors in the Inland Steel Building.

Gensler’s new office will be a floor below the landlord, as Freed plans to move its headquarters from Palatine to the fourth floor of the Sullivan Center early next year. Freed will occupy about 50,000 square feet.

“We are very excited by Gensler’s announcement,” Freed president Larry Freed says in a statement. “We enjoy working with them and look forward to having them as our neighbors.”

Freed is spending close to $100 million on interior renovations to the 600,000-square-foot Carson’s store that closed last year. The developer will convert about 250,000 square feet of the space into retail stores and the remainder into offices.

The entire Sullivan Center complex, a combination of multiple buildings that includes the Carson’s store, has a total of about 750,000 square feet of office space that’s now about 70% leased, a Freed spokeswoman says.

Gensler didn’t use a broker, while Freed was represented in the transaction by Wayne Shulman, a senior vice-president with HSA Commercial Real Estate.

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source: chicagorealestatedaily.com