KBS snagged another tenant for the West Loop’s Accenture Tower.
The landlord struck an 11-year lease with Zoro, the growing online market for business and industrial equipment and an offshoot of maintenance supply company W.W. Grainger, for almost 42,000 square feet at 500 West Madison Street, Crain’s reported. The company will relocate its headquarters from suburban Buffalo Grove.
The tenant will occupy the top two floors of the 40-story building. The new office will consolidate Zoro’s 60,000-square-foot office and warehouse in Buffalo Grove and a 17,000-square-foot office on the 16th floor of the Madison building it has occupied since 2019.
Tyler and Paul Reaumond of CBRE represented Zoro in the deal, while Matt Lerner and Wendy Katz of Stream Realty Partners represent KBS in leasing in the Madison building, known as Accenture Tower for its anchor tenant Accenture, which leases more than 200,000 square feet in the property.
Zoro is following the trend of suburban-based businesses moving into downtown to have better access to the young talent pool in the city. Other companies that have made similar moves during the pandemic include Cisco Systems, Havi Group and Vizient. McDonald’s, Kraft Heinz and Mondelez International made changed their respective sceneries from suburban to city before the public health crisis.
Plus, train transit in and out of the Ogilvie Transportation Center, which adjoins Accenture Tower, and nearby Union Station trains will make commutes easier for employees who live in the suburbs, the company said.
The new office will be able to accommodate about 550 employees, which is less than the approximately 650 workers the company has today. Since some of the employees work remotely full-time and most come into the office only two or three days a week, the office will be large enough for the firm’s needs.
KBS Realty Advisors has owned the Madison building since 2013, when it bought the property for $425 million. Before Zoro moved in, the building was 91 percent leased, meaning it’s outperforming the downtown office average of 79 percent.
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