One of the Loop’s most recognizable office towers is quietly up for grabs, and it might not stay an office for long. Manulife has put its 40-story Helmut Jahn-designed high-rise at 55 West Monroe on the market, hiring JLL to hunt for a buyer and pitching the building as either a straight office lease-up play or a candidate for a full-blown conversion into apartments or hotel rooms. The roughly 815,000-square-foot tower is now more than 80 percent vacant, turning it into one of downtown Chicago’s most visible test cases in the conversion wave rolling through the Loop.
What brokers are pitching
JLL’s marketing materials peg the tower at 815,074 rentable square feet and show it is about 19.3 percent leased, which leaves roughly 657,000 square feet…..