Chicago Shuffle

A gaping hole in Chicago's North Michigan Avenue retail landscape is likely to be filled — and another one created — as furniture retailer Room & Board (Minneapolis) considers moving its stores from Chicago Place mall to a nearby site once occupied by DisneyQuest, Crain's Chicago Business reports.

The specialty retailer — which leases 49,000 square feet in the Chicago Place mall at 700 N. Michigan Ave. for its Room & Board and Retrospect stores — is in negotiations to lease roughly 60,000 of the 90,000 square feet left vacant at the corner of Rush and Ohio streets when DisneyQuest closed last year, a source says.

A Room & Board spokeswoman confirms that the company is considering a move when its Chicago Place lease expires in 2004. “We're exploring a couple of options,” she says, adding that a move to the DisneyQuest site in John Buck Co.'s North Bridge complex is one of them.

If Room & Board moves ahead with the plan, Chicago-based Buck would replace the building's distinct green-glass facade — custom-designed for DisneyQuest — with a more traditional storefront, a source says. The DisneyQuest space housed an indoor, interactive theme park.