Walgreens Commits to New Wrigley Building

Walgreen Co. (Deerfield, Ill.) has signed a lease for 28,000 square feet on two levels in the renovated Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

“Every tourist who comes to Chicago walks down Michigan Avenue,” said Tom Connolly, Walgreen's vp for facilities. “You could not ask for better positioning.”

Walgreens is the most prominent of several new retail tenants that have signed to be part of the $70 million project in the gleaming white building just north of the Chicago River. The 90-year-old building no longer houses the gum company that gave it its name, but the name will remain. It has been under renovation for over a year, with everything above its first floor gutted to turn it into a modern office complex.

On the outside, as reported in The New York Times, the elaborate Spanish baroque terra cotta facade was repaired and cleaned and about 2000 windows were replaced.

The amount of retail space in the complex has been roughly doubled to about 65,000 square feet on the first and second floors and an open-air shopping arcade along the city-owned plaza between the two towers has been created.

Walgreens is calling its new store there a flagship store, meaning it will probably replicate a lot of the features of the store it opened two years ago on North State Street, near Randolph, in Chicago’s Loop.