When Google opens its new Midwest headquarters at the James R. Thompson Center late next year, brokers and developers say it could kick off a wave of redevelopment that finally cures the Central Loop’s post-pandemic hangover.
Other mammoth rehab projects in the works nearby are expected to help fill vacant offices and revive aging skyscrapers with new apartments and hotel rooms. And once Google is established in its new offices, companies that do business with the tech giant could start checking out potential spaces in the area.
The Central Loop has suffered more from the office market crash than other portions of downtown. Its older and obsolete buildings have for years been losing office tenants to sleek new skyscrapers that popped up to the west along the Chicago River or in Fulton Market. Many retailers that once served busy workday crowds also left, leaving behind vacant storefronts.
The wave of investment led by Google will be a chance to stitch a new neighborhood together, one not wholly dependent on office workers, said Ariella Gibson, a spokesperson for the Chicago Loop Alliance. By 2028 she foresees a Central Loop busy seven days a week. It will have thousands of new residents and crowds of tourists, as well as Google’s workforce, all served by new stores and restaurants
“After Google and (thousands of) new (residences) come online, the dynamics of the Loop will change and it will look a lot different,” she said.
Google has already proven it can provide jolts of energy.
“Anytime you have something with Google’s name on it, you know you’re on the right path,” said Kathleen Bertrand, senior vice president of commercial real estate firm Transwestern.
The Google effect sparked redevelopment across Chicago’s Fulton Market neighborhood just west of downtown, largely occupied by food wholesalers and distributors in 2015 when the company opened its Midwest headquarters in a former cold storage building, she said. The neighborhood is now a premier office market with rehabbed lofts and new skyscrapers, and where streets are often crowded with shoppers and diners.
Bertrand said Google opening new offices won’t magically transform the Central Loop, an area bounded by State Street on the east, Wells Street on the west, Wacker Drive on the north and Ida B. Wells Drive on the south. The area’s vacancy rate, already at a historic high, kept climbing in 2025 as office users shrank their spaces or moved to the West Loop or Fulton Market. Developers also have no plans to break ground on any new downtown office towers.
But other Central Loop projects are underway or planned, she said, and its streets will be much busier by 2028.
JPMorgan Chase is doing a floor-by-floor gut rehab of Chase Tower, its 60-story headquarters at 10 S. Dearborn St., while Canadian developer Onni Group bought 161 N. Clark St. for $125 million in March and plans a complete rehab of the 1-million-square-foot tower. Other developers are busy transforming old LaSalle Street buildings into residences and hotels.
“The effects of COVID were devastating, but I think people are looking at the Central Loop differently today,” said Michael Reschke, CEO of The Prime Group, who along with Capri Investment Group Chairman Quintin Primo leads the redevelopment of the Thompson Center.
Primo and Reschke have already developed several new downtown hotels and are eager to do more.
Choose Chicago, the city’s tourism agency, reported 11.9 million hotel bookings in 2025, nearly equal to the record-breaking year of 2019, and Reschke said this revival opens up many opportunities to develop more hotels while simultaneously removing obsolete offices from the Central Loop.
“We’ve obviously made a lot of bets on the future of Chicago,” Reschke said. “But even though it took us five years to return to the pre-COVID level of tourism, we’re finally back, and on an upward trajectory.”
The number of vacant offices throughout downtown rose in 2025, and the first few months of 2026 brought no relief. The downtown availability rate stood at 30.4% in the first quarter, up from about 29% one year ago, according to a Transwestern report.
The Central Loop fared worse than any downtown submarket, Transwestern found. More than 500,000 square feet of Central Loop office space was vacated in 2026’s first quarter, while office tenants in Fulton Market and River West occupied an additional 332,000 square feet.
But Google’s imminent arrival could stop the bleeding, said Robert Sevim, president of the Chicago region for Savills.
“In the next 12 months, that building is going to be well-occupied, and creating a lot of activity in the neighborhood,” he said.
Reschke and Primo bought the Helmut Jahn-designed Thompson Center in 2022 from the state of Illinois for $105 million and started construction in 2024. Google agreed to take over the 1.2-million-square-foot building at 100 W. Randolph St. after the duo completed the work.
The 17-story atrium will be transformed into a comfortable public space open to Loop office workers, according to renderings released by Google. The old food court will be replaced by a terraced green space and a set of new cafes, restaurants and retail.
Google said renovation of most of the building would be done by the end of 2026, but interior work would continue into next year. The company hasn’t said how many of its 2,000 employees in Chicago will move into the Thompson Center.
“Google has called Chicago home since 2000 and we’re committed to investing here,” said Rob Biederman, Google’s head of state and local government affairs. “We are proud to play a part in bringing a new wave of growth and innovation to the Loop.”
Financial consultant Morningstar is likely to lease several hundred thousand square feet in the building, and move from 22 W. Washington Blvd. around 2028, an early sign that other companies will flock around Google, Sevim said.
“You’re going to have this ripple effect,” he said.
Onni Group is still formulating plans for its rehab of 161 N. Clark Street, the 50-story building located just across the street from Google’s future home, but it will likely launch and finish the project after the tech giant opens its new office.
“I feel like it’s going to be a really bustling area,” said Paul Purewal, Onni’s vice president of development. “Office workers need somewhere to grab a coffee nearby, and obviously what (Google’s) doing in terms of restaurants and retail will be great, and our tenants will be able to walk over for the dining options and public areas.”
Onni also recently renovated another building in the area. In 2021, the development group purchased the former AT&T headquarters at 225 W. Randolph St. and launched a $140 million gut rehab, eventually filling up the nearly vacant building with dozens of new tenants.
Now called The Bell, the 32-floor building includes reconstructed offices, a health club with a cold plunge, several tenant lounges and bars, pickleball courts, a rooftop deck and Solette, a ground-floor casual restaurant.
The city and a group of developers have also joined together to kick off the LaSalle Street Corridor Revitalization, converting obsolete Loop offices near the Thompson Center into residences and hotel rooms.
The nearly $1 billion program, financed with private investment and Tax Increment Financing funds, will create nearly 2,000 new units at six buildings by 2028, including hundreds of affordable homes, transforming about 2 million square feet of space. More than a dozen other downtown conversion projects without city financing are also planned.
The initiatives will cut down on the office vacancy rate, breathe new life into the streets seven days a week, attract more stores and restaurants, and make the area even more appealing to office users, Purewal said.
“Right now, it’s not someplace you think of going on the weekend to spend your time,” he said. “This will allow the Central Loop to be much more vital because once people move in, everything will just flow.”
Retailers are already showing more interest in the Loop, according to Gibson, of the Loop Alliance. About 30 new downtown restaurants and stores opened in 2025, including Panera Bread at 168 N. State St. The restaurant chain had shuttered its downtown location during the pandemic.
“State Street hit bottom and it’s starting to work its way back up,” Gibson said.
Restaurant group Bottleneck Management said early in June that it will open this summer an Old Town Pour House bar and restaurant on the first floor of 120 N. LaSalle St. The Chicago-based group operates two of these restaurants in the suburbs, but closed its Chicago location in Old Town in early 2025.
As of March 2026, Chicago’s central business district was 61.9% as busy as compared with March 2019, according to Avison Young’s Office Busyness Index. That’s up from 57.5% recorded in March 2025.
“It feels like more (stores) are opening than closing,” said Tony Maggiore, Chicago-based chair of the Midwest market leadership team for Chase. “The pendulum is swinging the other way toward the revitalization of the Loop.”
In 2021, Chase thought about developing a new skyscraper for its more than 7,000 Loop employees, and the bank looked at possible sites in Fulton Market and the South Loop. But Chase Tower’s iconic, sloped steel-and-concrete design, massive public plaza, and proximity to trains and the theater district, led the company to stick with its longtime home.
“When you’ve been in one location for 57 years, it’s special,” Maggiore said. “I’ve reminded everyone we’ve got this great ecosystem in the Loop.”
Chase employees typically commute downtown five days a week, he said, and Chase wants to ensure they see big improvements. The bank will complete the floor-by-floor overhaul by mid-2027, moving offices away from the windows and flooding the whole interior with natural light. A grand entrance staircase is under construction on the first floor, and Chase is also renovating the public plaza, improving the cafeteria, and adding a new fitness center, conference rooms and elevators.
“I think it’s going to be a showpiece for us,” Maggiore said. “We’d love nothing more than to have other companies recommit to the Loop.”
