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Citing data from real estate firm CBRE, Crain’s Chicago Business
reported that the downtown office vacancy rate rose for the 15th
consecutive quarter, from 28.2% at the end of 2025 to 28.6% in
the first quarter of this year.
Wirepoints founder Mark Glennon said 28.6% is a terrible rate.
“If you go back to 2019, which wasn't great then, actually,
before COVID, it was 12%. So obviously, this has worsened
substantially, continues to worsen,” Glennon told The Center
Square.
Glennon said modern buildings with amenities are holding up
well, but older, Class B buildings are selling space for 10 or
20 cents on the dollar.
“The tax assessments, of course, plummet after that because the
value of the building is based on how much rental income they
get. If they're sitting empty, their valuations are going to
plummet and those tax bills have to be passed off to somebody,
and that means residential owners largely,” Glennon said.
Glennon said work-from-home trends have made office vacancy a
national problem, but card swipe data from Kastle Systems showed
Chicago’s actual occupancy rate rising from 55% of what it was
before the pandemic to around 57%.
“The one ray of hope, perhaps in the long term, is that that
number will creep up, that the work-from-home trend will fade.
Interestingly, that has been the case in most other cities in
the world,” Glennon said.
Glennon said more popular cities like Austin have actual
occupancy rates around 80%.
When asked what people in the private sector could do about high
office vacancy rates, Glennon said so-called civic leaders have
been far too complacent and understated in their criticisms of
government.
“They’ve got to really take the bull by the horns and force some
reforms on the city. It would start with crime. That's clearly a
solvable problem if the city would get on it, and that's one of
the factors that contributes to people not wanting to go
downtown and makes work from home more popular,” Glennon said.
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