Financial firm moving to Sterling Bay’s new Fulton Market development

Fulton Market has another new non-tech tenant.

The Boston-based Wellington Management is expanding its presence in Chicago with a move to the transformative neighborhood.

The company signed a 13-year lease for about 24,000 square feet at developer Sterling Bay’s soon-to-open 345 North Morgan Street building in the former meatpacking district, Crain’s reported. The 200,000 square-foot building is now 85 percent leased and construction should be completed next month.

Leasing agents Russ Cora and Austin Lusson represented Sterling Bay. Gabrielle Harvey and Eddie Viliunas of Jones Lang LaSalle represented Wellington.

Details of the price per square foot were not disclosed.

Wellington’s move is set to happen by Q2 of next year and will quadruple its Chicago office footprint after it leaves the much smaller 6,000 square-foot office at 222 West Adams Street in the Loop.

Its new Fulton Market office is on the Morgan Street building’s fourth floor. The office will be designed with an open floor plan to accommodate the company’s growth plans to add up to 100 employees over the next few years, according to Crains.

The firm joins a wave of others that have relocated from the Loop to Fulton Market as the former industrial neighborhood has become a hip destination. But Wellington is among only a few Chicago businesses that have looked to expand their office space. Crafty, a company that delivers supplies and stocks office pantries, announced plans to relocate to a 12,000-square-foot space in the heart of the Loop, from its 3,500-square-foot headquarters at 917 West Washington Boulevard.

In the wake of more companies shifting to remote and hybrid work, Chicago hit a new record-high vacancy rate of 21.2 percent in the city’s central business district — the second-largest in the nation — at the end of March.

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— Victoria Pruitt