Millbrook Properties Executive Director Jen Sweeney sums up the doldrums of Chicagoland’s office market in an anecdote involving blue gift bags filled with candy bars, pens and other goodies meant to welcome tenants back to the office in June 2020. The bags were left in conference rooms in suburban Chicago and across the Midwest a few months after the pandemic hit in a gesture of solidarity and hopefulness the business world would soon return to rights. “Now here we are two years later, and we still have a whole bunch of those blue bags left and we've had to throw away those candy bars. They've gone stale,” Sweeney said. 
Although the market is hitting its stride in places like Fulton Market, River North and some suburban submarkets, vacancy is sky-high, leasing dropped to its lowest level in more than a year in the third quarter and a wave of distress is likely in…  Read the full story here. | 
