Vivid Seats moving headquarters to offices above historic Marshall Field building on State Street
Chicago-based online ticket broker Vivid Seats plans to move its headquarters to the historic Marshall Field building in converted office space above the Macy’s flagship State Street store.
Vivid signed an 11-year lease last month for 48,000 square feet on the ninth floor of the building at 24 East Washington St. beginning Jan. 1, 2023, with the space to be used for its “new principal executive offices,” according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The new lease has an average monthly rent of $122,500, and an option to extend for five years, according to the filing. Vivid terminated its current office lease at 111 N. Canal St. effective Nov. 15, 2022 — three years before its original expiration, according to financial filings.
A Vivid spokesperson did not return a request for comment Friday.
Founded in 2001, Vivid Seats is an online ticket marketplace that connects buyers and sellers for live concerts, sports and theater events. Hard hit by the pandemic, Vivid saw revenues fall from $469 million in 2019 to $35 million in 2020, but the numbers are rebounding. Vivid, which went public through a special purpose acquisition company in October, is projecting 2021 revenues of $420 million to $435 million, according to its third-quarter earnings report.
The company cut its staff in half during 2020, and ended the year with 236 full-time employees between its Chicago headquarters and auxiliary office in Toronto. Hiring in 2021 increased its head count to 75% of its pre-pandemic number, according to filings.
Vivid’s new corporate home has a storied history. Built in stages beginning 1892, the 14-story Marshall Field and Co. Building became the most recognizable department store in Chicago. Designed in the Classical Revival style by the architecture firm of Daniel Burnham and successor firms, the building was designated a Chicago landmark in 2005.
The iconic building occupies an entire block, bounded by State, Washington and Randolph streets and Wabash Avenue.
While the lower floors were filled with merchandise, the upper floors served behind-the-scene functions, from administrative and storage to manufacturing. Notably, Field’s signature Frango mints were made on the 13th floor of the building for nearly 70 years.
Federated Department Stores bought the parent of Field’s in 2005 and converted the State Street flagship and other Chicago-area stores to Macy’s. In 2018, Macy’s sold the mostly unused eighth through 14th floors to Brookfield Properties for $30 million. The real estate investment giant, an arm of Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management, redeveloped the floors into nearly 650,000 square feet of office space.
In January 2020, Chicago-based market research firm Numerator became the first tenant at the redeveloped office space, signing a lease for 60,000 square feet on the 12th floor, moving its headquarters from Willis Tower.
A Brookfield spokesperson did not return a request for comment.
