Publicis Adds To Record Sublease Market With Largest Listing

Another large block of office space is being offered for sublease, adding to the record amount already available in the Chicago area.

Publicis Groupe, a Paris-based owner of marketing and media companies that include brands such as Leo Burnett Worldwide and Digitas, listed 350,000 square feet of the office space it leases across 14 floors in the 50-story building at 35 West Wacker Drive for sublease, Crain’s reported. The listing, which is being marketed by Cushman & Wakefield, is the largest contiguous block of available office space on Chicago’s secondary market.

The company’s move to unload more than half of the 685,000 square feet of office space it leases across 32 floors in the tower follows the overarching trend that has seen the rise of remote and hybrid work models leave office landlords with record high vacancies.

With the new listing, downtown Chicago now has almost 7.3 million square feet of office space available for sublease, more than double the 3.3 million square feet that was on the sublease market when the pandemic began. The Publicis listing beats out Groupon’s almost 291,000-square-foot sublease offering at 600 West Chicago Avenue for the largest in the city.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Steve Schneider is marketing the 35 West Wacker space on behalf of Publicis. There’s eight years left on its lease.

In a statement, Publicis said the sublease listing “is a normal course of business aligned with our future of work planning, rooted in purposeful time together in the office, with flexible models that benefit both talent and our business.”

The news comes on the heels of Tyson Foods listing the entire 233,000-square-foot West Loop office building it occupies at 400 South Jefferson Street in the West Loop for sublease. Tyson’s listing is the third largest block of space on downtown Chicago’s sublease market.

Marketing information from Cushman & Wakefield say the property is set to get a new lobby and tenant lounge and Publicis’ lease runs through 2030.

Shaya Prager’s New York-based company Opal Holdings partnered with investor Katherine Cartagena to buy the 1.1 million-square-foot Wacker Drive tower, long known as the Leo Burnett building, for $415 million in late 2021, marking the biggest Chicago office transaction of the pandemic. The landlord is also on the verge of losing its second-largest tenant, law firm Winston & Strawn, which is reportedly eyeing a move with a new lease at 300 North LaSalle Street.

— Victoria Pruitt