Chicago’s tech market has continued to expand in recent years and according to a new report, some of that growth can be attributed to the increasing number of coastal tech firms relocating or expanding to the Windy City.
CBRE’s annual Tech-30 Report, which measures the tech industry’s impact on office rents in the 30 leading tech markets across the U.S. and Canada, shows that the Midwest, and Chicago in particular, has become a top destination for expansion from San Francisco tech companies.
Since 2013, Bay Area-based companies have leased 2 million square feet of office space in Chicago. That, combined with the growth of Chicago’s homegrown tech companies, brings the total amount of office space occupied by tech companies in Chicago to 17.7 million square feet, according to the report.
In 2018 alone, Chicago office space occupied by tech companies grew by 4 million square feet. The River North neighborhood is one of the more popular and pricier destinations for tech companies, as it is on average 32 percent more expensive than the overall market.
Across all industries in Chicago, tech companies accounted for 21 percent of all major office-leasing activity in the first half of 2019, up from 11 percent when CBRE began tracking the figures in 2011.
Chicago's tech workforce now has more than 73,000 workers, according to the report. In 2017 alone, Chicago’s tech market added about 4,500 news jobs. Elsewhere in the Midwest, the report named Milwaukee an up-and-coming market because it has over 11,700 high-tech jobs.
“The Chicago tech community continues to expand at a steady rate,” said Brad Serot, the vice chairman and member of CBRE’s Tech and Media Practice Group, in a statement. “The city’s highly skilled workforce has attracted some of the world’s largest tech firms as they look to tap into the market’s immense talent at a much more affordable cost than coastal alternatives.”
Chicago’s affordability has long been touted as an upside to starting or moving a tech company to the Windy City, and some Bay Area companies have done so in the last couple years.
Google announced over the summer that it plans to double down on its Chicago offices in the West Loop. Uber also recently revealed plans to hire 2,000 new employees in its new space in the Old Main Post Office. And last year, Salesforce announced plans to add 1,000 new jobs in Chicago over the next five years.
Additionally, smaller Bay Area companies, such as BlueCrew, a San Francisco-based on-demand staffing startup, relocated its headquarters to Chicago earlier this year. And Fintech company Tegus also relocated its headquarters from San Francisco to Chicago in March.
