Chicago Developer Sterling Bay Cuts Staff

One of Chicago’s most prolific developers cut its staff by about 5 percent.

Sterling Bay, the builder behind Google’s Fulton Market offices and the $6 billion Lincoln Yards megadevelopment, “had to make the difficult decision” to eliminate 10 positions, a spokeswoman for the firm said. The firm, which had about 185 people on staff according to its website, declined to comment further.

The layoffs come as real estate companies, from major brokerages to landlords and developers that span residential and commercial asset classes, remain exposed to recessionary headwinds and high interest rates. Commercial brokerage layoffs have been announced at both CBRE and JLL, and national residential brokerages Compass and Anywhere Real Estate have already announced staff reductions this year. Proptech startup Pacaso also laid off workers late last year. Further, Anywhere’s Coldwell Banker Real Estate plans to close several Chicago-area offices.

The staff reduction also follows Sterling Bay’s former CFO, Michael Keesey, parting ways with the company. Keesey, who was with the development firm since 2014, left in August and is now CFO at Chicago-based real estate investment firm Partners Enterprise Capital. Sterling Bay’s new CFO Mike Beringer started in November and previously worked for the Blackstone-owned company Revantage for more than five years. It’s unclear if the change in the company’s financial leadership factored into the decision to cut staff.

The firm, led by Andy Gloor and Keating Crown, still has multiple large projects in the works, including construction on the 24-story, 490,000-square-foot office building at 360 North Green Street in Fulton Market, where Boston Consulting has already claimed 200,000 square feet. It was also selected by Ken Griffin’s Citadel to build a new 1-million-square-foot office tower in Miami’s Brickell area after the billionaire hedge funder announced he was moving his firm out of Chicago to South Florida.

Sterling Bay’s other notable projects in Chicago include offices for Google at 320 North Morgan Street in Fulton Market and McDonald’s headquarters at 110 North Carpenter Street. The firm gained city approval for the 53-acre Lincoln Yards multi-phase project between the Wicker Park, Bucktown and Lincoln Park neighborhoods in 2019, and work on its first commercial building at 1229 West Concord Place, set to be a life sciences asset, is nearly finished.