Vivid Seats takes half planned space in Marshall Field building

Macy’s flagship store in the Marshall Field building on State Street is getting a new upstairs neighbor.

Vivid Seats, an online ticket resale company, signed an 11-year lease for about 48,000 square feet of office space on the building’s ninth and 10th floors, Crain’s reported, citing a regulatory filing. Vivid is taking less than half the space it planned to lease before the pandemic, when like many companies it reduced its footprint.

The firm plans to move into 24 E. Washington Street, on the building’s south side, in 2023. Its lease at 111 N. Canal Street, ends in November.

Vivid is down to 40,000 square feet at Canal Street, compared with 90,000 square feet
between there and an expired sublease on W. Randolph Street, according to CoStar Group data cited by Crain’s. Vivid employs 265 people in Chicago.

Vivid’s decision also reflects the premium companies are putting on amenities. The gym and rooftop deck and lounge that Toronto-based developer Brownfield Properties added to the Marshall Field building helped draw Vivid Seats out of the trendier West Loop neighborhood, CBRE’s Brad Serot, who negotiated the lease on behalf of Vivid, told Crain’s.

“Our new headquarters is not just an investment in Chicago’s growing tech sector, it’s an investment in our current and future employees,” a Vivid spokesperson said in a statement to Crain’s. “This space will support a larger workforce and hybrid model with shared and collaborative workspaces.”

Its departure from Canal Street presents a challenge for JPMorgan, which owns the 16-story Gogo Building building. Namesake tenant Gogo put a third of its space up for sublease in 2019 and Uber recently left the building. JPMorgan tried to evict Potbelly, a sandwich chain, from the building in 2020, That issue was resolved and Potbelly remains at the location even after the landlord said it owed more than $800,000 in unpaid rent.

[Crain’s] – Harrison Connery