Uber is hitching a ride to Chicago's meatpacking district, where it plans to hire another 150 employees in its Midwest headquarters by late 2015.
San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc., which brought its taxi-hailing and ride-sharing smartphone appto Chicago in 2011, signed a three-year lease for the 12,000-square-foot building at 370 N. Carpenter St., where it plans to move by June, said Midwest General Manager Andrew Macdonald.
The property owner, Chicago-based developer Sterling Bay Cos., is in the process of gutting the interior of the building, a former Kingdom Farms Inc. meatpacking facility, Sterling Bay Managing Principal Andy Gloor confirmed.
“We looked at staying in River North, but we bought into the vision Sterling Bay has for the area,” Mr. Macdonald said.
Uber is already on its third Chicago office, moving in February to nearby 300 N. Elizabeth St., also owned by Sterling Bay, the most active developer in the area on the western edge of the West Loop, a hotbed of development. Previously, Uber was at 750 N. Orleans St., where it moved from shared office space at another River North loft building.
Sterling Bay's many nearby projects include converting the former Fulton Market Cold Storage building into the future Chicago office of Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc. a block north of Uber's destination. Google's venture capital arm is an investor in Uber.
EMPLOYEE GROWTH
Uber expects to go from about 50 employees here now to 100 by the end of this year, with 200 Chicago employees by late 2015, which could cause the firm to outgrow a fourth Chicago office, according to Mr. Macdonald.
“We wanted a landlord we could grow with,” Mr. Macdonald said. “If we need to move again in a year or two, we feel there will be options.”
Uber was represented in the lease by First Vice President Paul Reaumond and Senior Vice President Brad Serot in the Chicago office of CBRE Inc.
Uber's Midwest office includes marketing, customer support and operations employees for Chicago, as well as teams serving Minneapolis, Detroit, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City and Milwaukee, Mr. Macdonald said. Dallas, Denver, Toronto, Montreal, Houston and Columbus, Ohio, all have workers based in their cities who Mr. Macdonald oversees, he said.
As privately held Uber moves into new markets, such as St. Louis, Kansas City, Louisville, Ky., Madison, Wis., and Tulsa, Okla., employees serving those cities also may be based in Chicago, Mr. Macdonald said.
Uber's temporary space on Elizabeth is part of a block-wide parcel Sterling Bay bought Jan. 31 for about $22 million, including a loan assumption, according to Cook County records and Mr. Gloor. Sterling Bay bought the property from a venture of Chicago-based Marc Realty LLC.
In addition to two existing office buildings, including the one where Uber is using short-term space, the property includes the partially built headquarters of now-defunct MarchFirst Inc. Sterling Bay plans to complete that building, 1380 W. Fulton Market, where construction halted in 2000 as consultancy MarchFirst spiraled into bankruptcy. The developer is in talks with large tenants to take all of its 300,000 square feet of the building, Mr. Gloor said.