Solstice doubles lease in Sterling Bay’s GoGo Building to 60K sf

Sterling Bay has signed technology consulting firm Solstice to a 60,000-square-foot lease in the Gogo Building, 111 North Canal Street, effectively doubling the company’s footprint in the 16-story West Loop complex.

The company will take over the seventh floor of the 860,000-square-foot building, formerly known as the River Center building, according to a Wednesday morning announcement from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office. The space was designed by Gensler to include co-working spaces and a “hologram screen.”

Solstice added more than 150 new employees last year and is expected to hire even more by the end of 2018.

Sterling Bay sold the 105-year-old GoGo Building to JP Morgan Asset Management in 2015 for $305 million, but the mega-developer still “retains leasing and property management responsibilities,” according to its website. The company bought the building for $100 million in 2012 and spent tens of millions on renovations.

The brick complex also counts Twitter, Uber and SAP among its tenants.

Sterling Bay has spent some $1.5 billion ballooning its Downtown office holdings so far this year, including buying Groupon’s River West Headquarters, both Prudential buildings and the office portion of the former John Hancock Center.

Elsewhere in the West Loop, the developer broke ground on the first of three office towers set to deliver a combined 1.7 million square feet of office space to Fulton Market when they’re completed.

Companies with suburban headquarters have been scrambling in recent years to open offices Downtown, hoping to lure new generations of city-dwelling young professionals.

In June, 601W Companies announced it signed Walgreens to a 200,000-square-foot lease in the redeveloped Old Main Post Office redevelopment where the Eisenhower Expressway hits Chicago River.