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Chicago

Sovereign Partners lands suburban office lease with freight firm’s expansion

Landlord bought the 486,000 sf building at a discount amid pandemic

AIT Worldwide Logistics' Vaughn Moore and 2 Pierce Place (Facebook/AIT Worldwide Logistics)
AIT Worldwide Logistics' Vaughn Moore and 2 Pierce Place (Facebook/AIT Worldwide Logistics)

An Itasca-based freight forwarding company is moving into a new office building with more space.

AIT Worldwide Logistics signed a lease for 57,000 square feet in the former Arthur J. Gallagher headquarters in Itasca, Crain’s reported. As part of the deal, the 27-story Gallagher Center, at 2 Pierce Place, will feature AIT signage on the exterior.

The company will relocate its headquarters to 2 Pierce Place from the 30,000-square-foot space at 701 North Rohlwing Road that it has occupied for 25 years.

AIT’s appetite for more real estate is an outlier against the trend of companies cutting back on office space since the rise in popularity of remote or hybrid work models made necessary by the pandemic almost three years ago.

The deal is good news for the suburban office market, and especially for New York City-based Sovereign Partners, which bought the 486,000 square foot property at a discount of $24 million a year ago when it was 40 percent occupied. The property cost Sovereign a fraction of the $84 million that Piedmont Office Realty Trust paid for the building in 2006.

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The suburban office market hasn’t been kind to other landlords, either. In Northbrook, a venture of the Phoenix, Arizona-based real estate investment trust Orion Office sold an empty 197,300-square-foot office building to an unnamed buyer for about $2.5 million, 95 percent less than the $44.3 million Orion paid for it in 2011.

Vaughn Moore, AIT’s executive chairman and CEO said the move will help the company expand its roots in the Chicago area.

Terms of the lease weren’t disclosed, but Moore said in his statement that he expects AIT to use the space as its global headquarters for the next 10 to 20 years.

Eric Kunkel and Steve Spinell with JLL negotiated the lease on AIT’s behalf, while Newmark’s Rob Lundin and John Norris oversee leasing for the Sovereign-owned building.

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— Victoria Pruitt

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Office MarketSuburban Chicago