Uber is poised for a massvie office expansion in Chicago as it looks to hire hundreds of new employees in the city.
The ride-sharing giant is on the hunt for hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space Downtown as it launches a major expansion of its Chicago-based Uber Freight division, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Similar to the way Uber’s bread-and-butter ride-sharing platform connects riders with drivers, Uber Freight connects truck drivers with shippers looking to deliver goods in the e-commerce market.
Uber already has 1,000 employees in Chicago in a total of 185,000 square feet between 111 North Canal Street and 225 West Randolph Street, according to the Tribune. Several hundred of the employees work for Uber Freight, which plans to double its headcount locally in the next year, a representative said.
The expansion would add Uber to the roster of tech firms gobbling up new office space Downtown. Google, Facebook and Salesforce all inked big office expansions in the past year.
Uber’s Randolph Street office is in a building owned by Kushner Companies that an Angelo Gordon & Company venture is in the process of buying. It is Kushner’s lone Chicago property. [Chicago Tribune] — John O’Brien