Walgreens Lists Massive Downtown Chicago Office for Sublease

Walgreens Boots Alliance is pulling out of downtown Chicago, putting its entire workspace at the Old Post Office on the market for sublease as it consolidates staff back to its Deerfield headquarters.

The drugstore chain is seeking a tenant for its full 208,600-square-foot lease at 433 West Van Buren Street, according to a CBRE marketing flyer reported by Crain’s.

The move follows new CEO Greg Motz’s recent confirmation that Walgreens would close its downtown office to “streamline operations” in the wake of the company’s $10 billion sale to New York private equity firm Sycamore Partners.

The listing instantly becomes the largest block of downtown sublease space available, further straining a central business district already battling historic vacancy. The volume of sublease inventory has fallen from pandemic highs but remains more than 50 percent above pre-2020 levels, according to CBRE. The brokerage’s Mark Cassata, Bill Sheehy, and Brady Wolfe are marketing the space for Walgreens.

The Old Post Office, redeveloped by New York-based 601W Companies into 2.5 million square feet of modern workspace, was a symbol of Chicago’s pre-pandemic office boom.

Walgreens was one of the first major tenants to sign on in 2019, relocating about 1,300 suburban employees and several hundred from its State Street office in a bid to attract younger urban talent. Now, the same migration trend has reversed as corporate tenants retrench to the suburbs or shrink their office space amid remote work and cost-cutting pressures.

Walgreens’ sublease package includes 154,000 square feet of fully built-out office space with nearly 1,000 workstations, plus 39,670 square feet of raw space and a 14,600-square-foot event and conference area on the first floor. The company’s lease runs through November 2032 and features prominent signage on the building’s exterior.

CBRE’s materials note that the space can be combined with adjacent offices for a contiguous 300,000-square-foot block — a rare offering in the Loop. Still, finding a taker won’t be easy, as sublease deals often come at deep discounts. But there have been recent takers: Wolverine Trading landed an 83,000-square-foot sublease from staffing agency TrueBlue at the Old Post Office over the summer.

— Eric Weilbacher