Diverse New Tenant Mix in Chicago Bolsters a Market in Recovery

In June, crowd-sourced online review publisher Yelp announced its employees were going fully remote and it would be shuttering its offices at Chicago's Merchandise Mart. In late September, the American Bar Association conducted a national survey and found that most lawyers want the option to work from home — bad tidings for the 17% of Chicago office spaced leased to law firms. Then in October, Meta, whose Chicago office is large enough to accommodate more than 1,000 employees but has never employed that many in the city, announced plans to shrink its office footprint nationwide. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Meta’s top real estate executive said the moves are to make the company's spaces more dynamic, to encourage energy and activity.