Chicago Office Leasing Inches Toward Recovery

Chicago’s office market in 2025 topped a benchmark it hadn’t touched since the pandemic cratered demand.

Tenants leased 10.3 million square feet of office space in downtown Chicago last year compared to an alltime low of 5.5 million square feet leased in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, historic data from Savills indicates. The 10 million square feet threshold hadn’t been surpassed since 2019 until last year, according to a report from Savills rounding out 2025.

Data collected since 2020 shows leasing has inched upward each year, with 2025 coming closest to pre-pandemic leasing levels so far. In 2019, tenants leased 13 million square feet of office space in the central business district.

The progress is good news for the beleaguered Loop.

The top office leasing transaction recorded by Savills in the last quarter of 2025 was the renewal and expansion of law firm Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff’s 130,000-square-foot deal in Irvine Company’s building at 71 South Wacker Drive. The law firm’s lease grew by 33,000 in the new deal.

Another law firm, Ropes & Gray, expanded its space to 105,000 square feet at 191 North Wacker Drive, which is owned by Manulife. It previously occupied about 79,000 square feet in the building.

Still, office landlords are hardly in the clear. Out of the full inventory of downtown office space, about 29.5 percent is available for rent. The percentage stayed nearly stagnant from 2024, when it came in at 29.4 percent, according to Savills.

And foreclosure lawsuits continued to play out among big-name building owners and lenders in 2025, including landlord AmTrust and special servicer LNR Partners over the Illinois Center.

LNR Partners filed to foreclose on the New York-based landlord’s $260 million loan for the two-tower property at 111 East Wacker Drive and 233 North Michigan Avenue in 2024 and the legal dispute over the property is still ongoing.

Trouble started when The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services vacated 170,000 square feet in 2023, leaving a hole in the 2.1 million-square-foot complex.

Savills notes, however, that overall trends paint a better picture for the year ahead.

Asking rents increased 5.1 percent year-over-year to $47.08 per square foot, with Class A rents rising to $55.23 per square foot.

Meanwhile, office-to-residential conversions are getting underway with support from the city, helping to chip away at the glut of available workspace.