Engineering firm Ardmore Roderick is moving its headquarters into a Dayton Street Partners building in the West Loop, adding to the growing number of tenants gravitating to the area west of Fulton Market.
The company signed a lease for 12,700 square feet across two floors at 1500 West Carroll Avenue, where Dayton Street recently completed $4 million in renovations, the developer said.
The six-floor, 38,000-square-foot building is part of growing portfolio the Chicago developer has assembled in the West Loop in recent years.
It sits in a triangle-shaped area just west of the Fulton Market development boom, where current zoning doesn’t allow the kind of large projects happening to the east. But the city is considering a change that would open up the area to larger and more diverse uses, as it looks to the future of the Kinzie Industrial Corridor that stretches west from Fulton Market.
Dayton Street Principal Howard Wedren, though, said even under existing zoning rules the area is attractive to developers and investors.
“We like the nature of the buildings, we like the location and we typically have parking, which is a rarity,” Wedren said.
Wedren’s firm has scooped up a number of buildings west of Fulton Market recently, buying and redeveloping 2501 West Fulton Street, 2101 West Carroll and 2137 Walnut Street in the last two years. It recently bought a 33,000-square-foot office building at 1827 West Hubbard Street, and it owns the parking lot next to 1500 West Carroll that could be another future development.
He said area west of Fulton Market is appealing to tenants who have been priced out of the heart of Fulton Market because of the breakneck development there.
“The office rents are far more affordable,” he said, adding it’s close to public transportation and still close enough to Fulton Market to take advantage of its dining and nightlife scenes.
Wedren’s firm isn’t alone in pushing development westward. Fulton Market pioneers like Shapack Partners, Sterling Bay and Peppercorn Capital all have turned their attention to properties in the area in the past year.
Ardmore Roderick joins Via Tecknik, Limitless Coffee, Neato Agency and Breather in 1500 West Carroll, which Wedren said almost fully leased.
JLL’s Mike Curran and Mark Georgas represented Dayton Street in the Ardmore Roderick lease.