Beacon notches AMA Plaza lease extension with law firm’s 15% haircut

Burke, Warren MacKay & Serritella stays at 330 North Wabash, chops space to 47,000 sf

Savills’ Joe Learner and AMA Plaza at 330 North Wabash Avenue
Savills’ Joe Learner and AMA Plaza at 330 North Wabash Avenue (Savills, Beacon Capital Partners, Getty)

Fred Seigel’s Beacon Capital Partners scored a win at the firm’s AMA Plaza as a Chicago law firm opts to stay in the River North landmark, albeit with a 15 percent haircut.

Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella inked a multi-year lease extension to occupy more than 47,000 square feet across the 330 North Wabash Avenue office tower’s 21st and 22nd floors. 

While the firm is downsizing slightly from the 55,000 square feet it leased in 2012, according to past reports, Savills’ Joe Learner cheered the law practice’s commitment to the property — formerly known as the IBM building — that it has occupied for more than 25 years.

“After exploring market alternatives, we determined their longtime home provides the location, building quality and financial terms that meet the firm’s long-term business objectives,” Learner, who handled lease negotiations for the tenant, said. “This transaction is a prime example of a local organization recommitting to downtown Chicago and notably, the central business district.”

While the law firm is joining a number of others in shedding office space and adding to downtown’s record-high vacancy rate, its new lease isn’t as much of a cut as other downtown tenants have made, with some leaving the central part of downtown for trendier properties in Fulton Market, a submarket that keeps getting hotter at the Loop’s expense.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

Savills announced the law firm’s lease a day after engineering consultant Thornton Tomasetti announced that it would leave AMA Plaza for a new space just west of the Fulton Market District, downsizing its office footprint by about 40 percent with a move to 600 West Fulton Street.

Similar slashes of space by other companies in favor of newly built offices featuring fancy amenities have pushed office vacancy in Chicago’s central business district to a record 22.4 percent as of the first quarter, according to CBRE.

Beacon Capital recently completed a repositioning project for AMA Plaza that included updating its signage, elevator cabs and lobbies, and HVAC system. The 52-story, 1.5 million-square-foot building completed in 1972 was one of the last American projects designed by noted architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It was named a Chicago landmark in 2008 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.

Burke Warren is also planning to renovate its own space in a project managed by Savills’ Rich Dale and Laura Schueren, according to the real estate firm.

Read more