Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, is leaving the Aon Center in November after 26 years for smaller, more “collaborative” loft space in the Gogo building, a century-old former warehouse at 111 North Canal in the West Loop.
It’s a return to its roots for Edelman, which was launched Oct. 1, 1952, with three employees and one client, the Toni Home Permanent Co., just down the hall at the Merchandise Mart. The move may also presage the hybrid future for Edelman and other Chicago companies after nearly two years of pandemic-fueled remote work and relatively empty corporate offices.
“It’s a big move for us, because we’re at a place now where we don’t have to be in one of those big corporate office buildings,” said Richard Edelman, 67, president and CEO of the PR firm started by his father 69 years ago. “We’re much better placed in something that is a former warehouse, that’s funky and it’s got high ceilings.”
– Original Credit: Gensler
Co-headquartered in Chicago and New York, Edelman has been at the 83-story Aon Center since 1995. Its lease ran through 2024, but the firm was able to terminate it early, Edelman said. The move, which has been in the works since 2019, will reduce the office footprint from 170,000 square feet to 92,000 square feet.
Its new home is an extremely wide, 16-story converted warehouse built in the early 1900s for the Butler Brothers mail-order business. In recent years, the extensively renovated 860,000-square foot concrete loft building, formerly known as the River Center, has attracted a number of technology tenants including Gogo, the Chicago-based aviation internet company, whose name is emblazoned near the rooftop.
Edelman, which signed a 15-year lease, will occupy the 11th and 12th floors in space designed by architectural firm Gensler, and shaped in no small part by the pandemic, as companies move to hybrid, more collaborative work environments. The new “egalitarian” office will feature 257 desk seats and 800 other seats including collaboration zones, cafes, team rooms and meeting rooms, Edelman said.
Other amenities include a test kitchen and a roof deck with sweeping views of the Chicago River.
Edelman has 6,000 employees — including 537 in Chicago — and last year, despite pandemic challenges, generated more than $900 million, the most in its history, Edelman said. Like many companies, Edelman employees have mostly been working remotely since the pandemic hit in March 2020. The firm is looking at a hybrid return when it moves into the new office in mid-November.
“It’s entirely likely by we will go back with a hybrid — three days in, two days out,” Edelman said. “There won’t be any assigned spaces. It’s the next phase of work.”
The move comes at an uncertain time for traditional office space as the COVID-19 delta variant surge has pushed office returns back until next year for many companies, with hybrid and remote work likely to be part of the mix for the foreseeable future. At Edelman, 81% of its surveyed U.S. employees said they favored a flexible, hybrid work setting, according to the firm.
The central business district in Chicago is at a record 19% vacancy rate, up 5.2% since the pre-pandemic first quarter of 2020, according to real estate research firm CoStar Group. Add in another 6% of available space through sublease and new construction, and more than a quarter of Chicago’s downtown office space is on the market.
Kevin Cook, a longtime Edelman executive who became president of the Chicago office in January 2020, said providing a flexible work environment will be crucial to getting employees back together under one roof, and creating the kind of collaboration that he said only comes from in-person interaction.
“We built new muscle working remotely,” said Cook, 55. “We were able to deliver excellent work for our clients while not being together. But there is a big missing piece of the magic sauce.”
Founded by Dan Edelman, considered by many to be the father of modern public relations, the firm spent its first 20 years at the Merchandise Mart, moving to 221 N. LaSalle St. in 1972 and then 211 E. Ontario St. in 1985, before making the Aon Center its longtime home.
The new office space will pay homage to Edelman’s history with a museum recreating the original Merchandise Mart office of the firm’s patriarch. It will feature the late founder’s desk, his dictating machine, photos with dignitaries that once adorned his walls, examples of campaigns and crisis management efforts for clients, and other memorabilia collected over nearly seven decades in the PR business.
“The museum will tell the story of the firm,” Edelman said.
