Yet another law firm is consolidating its Downtown offices into a new building with more efficient layouts.
This time it’s the newly formed firm Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, which is closing two offices on Wacker Drive and moving into the 50-story BMO Tower that’s under construction near Union Station. The law firm will lease 105,000 square feet and move into the 1.5 million-square-foot building at 320 South Canal Street when it opens in early 2022, Crain’s reported.
The firm is the product of a recent merger between Minneapolis-based Faegre Baker Daniels and Philadelphia-based Drinker Biddle & Reath. The two offices opening up amid the move are Drinker Biddle’s 112,000 square feet at 191 North Wacker Drive and FaegreBD’s 54,000 square feet at 311 South Wacker. The firms were the biggest tenants in those buildings.
BMO Harris Bank, the namesake of the new building, will occupy 500,000 square feet in the building as part of a consolidation of its downtown Chicago offices. Financial services law firm Chapman & Cutler signed a 100,000-square-foot lease there.
Co-developers Riverside Investment & Development and Convexity Properties broke ground on BMO Tower in December.
Riverside is also co-developing another office tower at 110 North Wacker Drive, where it’s already attracted four other law firms relocating from elsewhere Downtown. A couple of other law firms have relocated to Riverside’s 54-story building 150 North Riverside Plaza since it opened in 2017.
The trend doesn’t bode well for the Downtown office market, especially in the Central Loop, as companies are instead choosing to move to the booming West Loop and the southwest corner of the Loop near the redeveloped Old Post Office. But it could be offset by the influx of companies moving Downtown.
[Crain’s] — Brianna Kelly