Lasky’s Spectrum Lands River North Experiential Retail Lease

Spectrum Real Estate heads Jerry Lasky and Murray Peretz have no qualms doing business with a “slimy” new tenant.

The longtime River North developers, who have specialized in rehabilitating the neighborhood’s brick and timber loft buildings into new offices, landed a 20,000-square-foot lease with the Sloomoo Institute. The new tenant will be a sensory experiential retail destination at 820 North Orleans Street involving the quintessential material of Nickelodeon game shows viewers: slime.

Sloomoo’s sensory experiential retail destination

Sloomoo hired artists and experts in the design and music industries to build out spaces where youth and adults alike can play with features and activities such as slime waterfalls, interactive mirrors, augmented reality moments and do-it-yourself slime kitchens that let patrons create their own slime dishes and sculptures.

The tenant exemplifies the kind of retailers Chicago officials and real estate players have said are important to multiply across the city to backfill empty storefronts in both the Loop and the Magnificent Mile, which has a vacancy rate of nearly 30 percent on a stretch of North Michigan Avenue. Such tenants establish new draws for families and young people that would feed potential customers to the nearby shops and restaurants.

The addition of interactive art museum Color Factory at Willis Tower during the pandemic was touted by Loop retail broker John Vance of Stone Real Estate as a strong example of a smart wager on urban experiential retail amid the health crisis that has devastated other merchants reliant on crowds of office workers.

“That got done and it opened in Covid, so that is a hats-off deal to the landlord, the brokers at CBRE and the tenant,” Vance said. “You’re making a bet that at some point the density [of office workers] and traffic is going to return. We believe in these tourist attractions.”

In River North, the retail scene has proven more resilient and faster to start its recovery than other neighborhoods, as its smaller dependence on officer workers than the Loop gave it a leg to stand on during the crisis. Sloomoo tapped Demetrios Comodromos of Method Design architects to bring its new Chicago destination to life ahead of its November opening. Sloomoo also struck a new 28,000-square-foot lease to open a new location in Atlanta and is reopening in 12,000 square feet in New York at 475 Broadway later this month.

Lasky and Peretz have been active real estate players in River North since the 1980s, and with Spectrum have assembled a portfolio of seven loft office buildings totaling 800,000 square feet, and 820 North Orleans is 155,000 square feet, according to the company’s website.