CHICAGO-Capitalizing on the still-soft office market downtown, financial advisory firm Stout Risius Ross Inc. has renewed its lease early at One S. Wacker Dr. The company is in 24,760-square-feet in the 40-story building at the corner of Wacker and Madison.

The company has been at the building about eight years, and had some time left on the lease, says Robert Sevim with Studley. The executive managing director represented the tenant in the lease, while Michael Curran with Jones Lang LaSalle represented landlord TIAA-CREF.

Sevim wouldn’t comment on the lease amount, and would only say it’s a long-term lease. However, he says SRR was able to gain a cheaper rate. “They’ve got some good visibility and signage at the location,” he tells GlobeSt.com. “This was an opportunity to make a commitment to the building and arrange a new lease structure to capture the market conditions that may not be around forever.” The building is just under 80% leased.

Though many landlord brokers have been trumpeting new activity in the past two quarters downtown, Sevim says it’s still a very soft market. “It’s still very tenant favorable, though on a case-by-case basis. It’s different, for example, in a class A high rise, or for a solid credit-worthy tenant,” he says. “There’s some pent-up demand sitting on the sidelines, and now companies are starting to make their strategic moves, but it’s not anything that’s going to change the market over the summer. The cycle turn to a landlord’s market is going to be incremental, not a whirlwind, there’s just not the fundamentals to support it.”

 

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