Tom’s Recommended Reading for the Week
It’s starting to feel like summer in Chicago with the temperature rising (keep your fingers crossed). Check out our top Chicago Commercial Real Estate articles before heading into the weekend!
- Give the People What They Want – A recent survey conducted by Mancini Duffy and designed to gain insight into ways that companies can maximize workplace performance to produce successful business results found a large disconnect between what’s most important to employees in the workplace and what employers are currently providing. Focusing on the importance and current performance of workplace characteristics in the areas of brand, talent, agility and work patterns, responses were consistent across the 20 industry sectors represented, with themes recurring across the four categories. Furthermore, many of the characteristics cited as most important to employees were not only relatively easy givebacks, but ones that could increase flexibility and efficiency, better support the way people want and need to work and enhance the image of the corporation… NREI
- Marketing Technology Startup, Revenew, Moves headquarters to Downtown Chicago – Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Revenew CEO Nasrin Thierer announced today that the marketing technology startup has relocated from Palatine to downtown Chicago. The new office, at 200 W. Monroe Street, places Revenew in the heart of the city’s tech startup community, and houses the company’s thirty-plus employees, with room to accommodate additional planned growth.“Revenew’s relocation to downtown Chicago is a testament to our city’s growing status as a leading technology hub, which attracts the most innovative startups and top technology talent from all over the country,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “I welcome Revenew to its new home and look forward to working with them and other startups as the industry continues to create 21st century jobs and opportunities for Chicagoans… World Business Chicago
- Chicago Stock Exchange Stays Put – The shift to electronic trading made the physical trading floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange unnecessary, and several years ago, the CSE gave up about 62,000-square-feet of the space it occupied for decades at One Financial Place, 440 S. LaSalle. That left the exchange with about 50,000-square-feet in the 40-story, 1-million-square-foot tower that anchors the southern end of the city’s financial district. And now the exchange has decided to give up about one-third of that space as it shifts to a more collaborative office layout.It has just signed a long-term renewal of about 33,000-square-feet at 440 S. LaSalle. The exchange has operated on the seventh and eighth floor, but will now consolidate operations onto one floor… Globe St.
- Walgreen checked out Main Post Office for HQ: report – In search of new digs for their headquarters, Walgreen Co. has scouted the hulking cement block that formerly housed the Main Post Office in the South Loop.But the Deerfield-based drugstore chain isn’t tipping their hand.The company told Crain’s Chicago Business it was “not engaged with developers on any new locations for our corporate headquarters.”But Crain’s reports that British developer Bill Davies, who owns the building, has negotiated with Walgreen without reaching an agreement.A source tells the Sun-Times that Walgreen reps were at the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity in January expressing interest in the post office, but discussions — described as preliminary — never broached job numbers or state incentives… Chicago Sun Times
- Strong Employment Numbers Lead to Hope for More Office Leases – There was a surge in hiring among national office tenants in April, with an addition of 75,000 new jobs, an increase representing more than one-third of the growth seen during the past 12 months. April’s improved employment statistics were reflected in most industries, with total non-agriculture new jobs rising by 288,000 and the national unemployment rate dropping to 6.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor. Employment in professional and business services increased by an average of 55,000 new jobs per month over the past year. The retail segment also saw an increase of about 35,000 new jobs in April, while growth in industrial employment was largely unchanged from previous months… NREI