J.F. McKinney & Associates has announced that Bankers Life & Casualty Insurance Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of CNO Financial Group, has signed an 11.5-year lease for 134,724 square feet, or four floors, of 111 East Wacker Drive, a high-rise Class A office building in Chicago’s East Loop. The insurance company will move its headquarters to the Parkway Properties Inc.-owned 111 East Wacker in February 2012.
The transaction was a complex, multi-party transaction. Bankers Life & Casualty will move its employees from 600 West Chicago, a historic building located at the western edge of the River North sub-market. The insurance firm will be moving into space at 111 East Wacker that Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), the parent company of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, is vacating as it moves into its expanded building at 300 East Randolph. An early termination of the HCSC space was required.
This transaction means that 60 percent of the impending Health Care Service Corporation vacancy has been filled before it can represent negative absorption in the marketplace. Because of the similar office space needs of the two companies, minimal tenant improvements will be necessary, so the transition is expected to be a smooth one.
Brian Whiting and Jack McKinney Jr. of J. F. McKinney & Associates, as well as Jay Buckley of Parkway Realty Services, represented Parkway Properties in the transaction, while Lisa Konieczka of CB Richard Ellis represented Bankers Life & Casualty. Craig McKesson of Jones Lang LaSalle represented Health Care Service Corporation.
111 East Wacker is a 32-story, Class A office complex containing more than one million rentable square feet of office, retail and parking.
