Chicago downtown office space vacancy rate ends year at record high levels

By Glenn Minnis | The Center Square contributor
The Center Square

(The Center Square) – Wirepoints Executive Editor Mark Glennon warns Chicago’s dwindling business community could be riding into high-gear after 2025 ended with record-high downtown office vacancy rates.

As vacancies climbed to 28.2%, or more than double where they stood prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest declines driven by the rise of remote workers marked the 14th straight quarter rates have hit record-high numbers.

“It’s the anti-business attitude, high tech that are strangling us,” Glennon told TSC. “You never see any effort to make life easier for employers here. The state of Illinois is like one big oppressive intermeddling HR department with countless rules and regulations that strangle people.”

As companies vacated roughly 370,000 square feet of offices more than they occupied in 2025, net absorption also fell for the ninth time in 10 quarters, prompting Glennon to envision a world where the city could see greater deficits leading to layoffs, poorer services and perhaps even missed paychecks for workers.

“Even the leased space is going largely empty,” he said. “As those leases come up, you’ll have more people cutting back. The valuations of those big buildings go down because they’re not getting as much rent and those lower valuations mean lower property taxes that they pay that has to get passed off someplace, and that goes largely to homeowners.”

Glennon argues all of it could ultimately lead to a world where the city could see greater deficits leading to layoffs, poorer services and perhaps even missed paychecks for workers.

“All those things, of course, snowball,” he adds. “They drive more people away, other things will continue to deteriorate, and businesses will get more fed up, more people will leave. It’s more of the same and a spiral downward.”

In the end, Glennon wonders how long the city can be the place some have long known it to be.

“It’s just like a gradual bleeding out, that’s what we’re seeing,” he said. “I don’t see any sense of urgency among voters or even most of our civic leaders. I think they’ve been far too timid about this and aren’t demanding the radical changes that I talked about.”

Data also shows that while average gross asking rents at so-called trophy office towers are up by 26% over the last five plus years, rents across all of downtown were essentially flat across the same time frame.