Chicago's River North Tech Hub Draws Companies to Former Skid Row

Chicago’s River North, a district once notorious for its prostitutes and dilapidated warehouses, is now home to fashionable apartment buildings and restaurants—and one of the hottest office markets in the U.S. Yelp, the San Francisco-based business review website, is among the latest companies to lease space in the area, joining daily deals website Groupon, which has its headquarters at 600 W. Chicago Ave. “The River North activity is just off the charts,” says Tiffany Winne, a senior managing director at commercial brokerage Savills Studley in Chicago.

Startups and expanding tech companies are cramming into River North, drawn by its historic buildings and easy access to mass transit, giving the neighborhood the lowest office vacancy in downtown Chicago. Office rents in the district have jumped 26 percent in the past two years, the third-largest increase for a U.S. neighborhood where high-tech companies cluster, behind Redwood City on the San Francisco Peninsula and Manhattan’s Midtown South, according to brokerage CBRE Group.