Former AT&T campus secures second major office tenant

Somerset Development landed its second major office tenant for the former AT&T campus in Hoffman Estates.

Club Colors, a branding and marketing firm, leased more than 52,000 square feet at the 150-acre Bell Works Chicagoland campus, Crain’s reported. The company will move its headquarters from its longtime home in Schaumburg in May.

Club Colors, which works with colleges and corporate clients to develop promotional materials, is the largest tenant signed for the revived former home of AT&T, which New Jersey’s Somerset bought in 2019. The developer planned to spend $200 million on updates that would transform the property into a place people want to work, shop, eat and live. The pandemic slowed those plans.

Somerset, which recently rebranded as Inspired, has leased out more than half of the 325,000 square feet of office space it’s building in the first phase of the larger 1.6 million-square-foot project.

Club Colors co-CEO Cris Tase told the outlet the company was looking for a bigger suburban office space that could help with future employee recruitment. The company has 85 employees and expects to have 125 by the time it moves into its new home.

“We compete against the city — the downtown feel,” in recruiting talent, Tase told the outlet. “So if we can offer a little bit of that feel, the open work space, amenities in the building, we think for the future, (Bell Works) is a good spot for us to live and we’ll be able to attract top talent as we grow the business.”

Heritage Crystal-Clean, an industrial waste management provider with more than 90 branches and waste recovery centers across the nation, leased 39,000 square feet in Bell Works Chicagoland two months ago.

Inspired has also signed office leases with Platinum Home Mortgage, Headline Solar and CPA Advisors Group.

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