Fulton Market Getting Yet Another Office Tower

Fulton Market has established itself as the city's hottest office market, and demand is so great that developers no longer concentrate on repurposing its old industrial properties into sleek offices.

Today, the neighborhood is the site of massive new construction projects, and officials from Ryan Cos. US, along with co-developer IBT Group, said Wednesday they plan to launch yet another.

The companies will break ground in early fall 2020 on a 700K SF office and retail building at 1200 West Fulton Market, two blocks west of Google's expanding regional headquarters. 

Named Axis West at Fulton Market, the project will have about 600K SF of office space, ground-floor retail, a 13K SF plaza and the kind of amenities now considered essential for downtown Class-A properties, including a fitness center, a tenant lounge, and both indoor and outdoor terraces with WiFi.

“Axis West will serve as a resource for businesses and consumers, as well as for the neighborhood at large. We are very proud to be able to contribute to the continued growth of this vital part of the city,” Ryan Cos. Vice President of Development Toby Veit said.

Developers had more than 3.5M SF of office under construction in the submarket by the end of Q3, nearly half of the total for all of Downtown Chicago, according to a report from Colliers International. The vacancy rate also sank from 9.8% last year to just 8.3% by Q3 2019.   

Colliers researchers believe it is likely the submarket still hasn't reached its potential. 

“Tenant demand for unique live-work-play environments has continued growing over the past four years as McDonald's, Google, WPP, WeWork, Dyson, Glassdoor and others have either relocated or announced plans to expand within the neighborhood, using it as leverage to attract talented labor in one of the tightest job markets in decades,” Colliers said.

Ryan Cos. will be the general contractor, CRTKL is the architect and Newmark Knight Frank will lead the leasing effort.