Medical Group Expands by 50,000-SF+ at AMA

The private, non-profit council evaluates and accredits medical residency programs in the United States, and is looking at future growth, says Studley's Executive Managing Director Lisa Davidson. She says she negotiated an aggressive lease for the council, and arranged for another 40,000 sf to be available for future expansion. "Originally, they were looking at buying a building, but then a few new buildings started coming online in the market, such as the Mesirow project. We were able to get proposals from those buildings, and then talk to ownership here about the options they wanted," she tells GlobeSt.com.

Davidson says the downtown office market today definitely favors the tenant, which are more and more aggressively pursuing renewals for leases not up for four years or more. "We just renegotiated a lease for Wildman Harrold, their lease wasn't up until 2012," Davidson says. The reason is the combination of the new buildings being announced, such as the planned 155 Wacker building, and the sense that most know it's a tenants market, and they don't know if it will hold true four-five years from now."

Davidson says she can't divulge the lease rate, but the average rate in the building is $14-$16 net. The building is 96% occupied, she says, but the AMA, the anchor tenant occupying more than 325,000-sf in the building, is in the market for new space.