Amazon expands Loop office footprint, plans to hire 450 in Chicago

Online shopping giant leased about 67,000 square feet of additional space

Jeff Bezos and 222 West Adams Street (iStock, Getty Images, Tishman Speyer)
Jeff Bezos and 222 West Adams Street (iStock, Getty Images, Tishman Speyer)

Amazon is hiring and adding to its office space in downtown Chicago.

The online shopping giant announced it has leased about 67,000 square feet at 222 West Adams Street, expanding on the 140,000 square feet the company already leases in the adjacent 227 West Monroe Street building, Crain’s reported.

The added space will allow Amazon to begin filling 450 jobs across multiple departments. Those jobs, which will include positions in web services, retail and advertising, will add to the more than 1,000 workers currently based in Amazon’s Loop office.

The latest deal is the third time Amazon has expanded its office footprint since moving into the building in 2016.

Amazon currently has 250 job openings in its Chicago office. The company is hiring for multiple roles including data engineers, business development managers, financial analysts and user-experience researchers. Amazon’s new office space will be available to employees beginning in late 2022.

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“Amazon’s continued growth and expansion in Chicago is testament to the city’s strengths in distribution and transportation, our direct connectivity across the world, diverse workforce and network of academic institutions training the workforce of tomorrow,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a statement.

The Tishman-Speyer-owned Adams Street building was about 77 percent leased before Amazon’s most recent expansion. Combined, the Adams Street and Monroe Street buildings, which are known as the Franklin, are almost 86 percent leased including Amazon’s new space.

Amazon has built multiple distribution centers and delivery stations throughout the Chicago area in neighborhoods like Pullman, Gage Park and Humboldt Park and hired more than 15,000 people as a result. Amazon said the growth in Chicago is part of the larger “multi-city expansion” planned for the company, including adding more jobs in Chicago, Austin and Phoenix over the next few years.

[Crain’s] — Victoria Pruitt