Conference Center Concepts Expands by 55%

CHICAGO-Summit Executive Centre, doing business as Conference Center Concepts, is expanding its lease at 205 N. Michigan Ave., at the two-tower Michigan Plaza. The tenant, which provides conference and meeting facilities, is expanding by 11,788 sf to a total of 33,137 sf. The company’s lease would have expired July 31, 2008 and has been extended through 2020.

Scott Kulberg, Joe Learner and Robert Sevim, all with Studley, represented CCC in the lease transaction. Michigan Plaza building ownership was represented in the transaction by Mark Buth and Kathleen Bertrand, both with MB Real Estate. Asking lease rates range from $28 per sf to $32 per sf gross, Buth says.

The tenant has 15 rooms and will add five meeting and conference rooms in the new space. “They had too much demand. Their business is doing extremely well,” says Kulberg, corporate managing director at Studley. The company has been a tenant in the building since 1997.

The tenant had been leasing the entire 10th floor of the building and will be expanding into approximately half of the 9th floor. The company considered relocating but chose to expand at Michigan Plaza because they could expand contiguously at a “good location that their clients are familiar with,” Kulberg says. The tenant also received tenant improvement packages to build out the space on the ninth floor as well as to update the company’s existing space, he says.

The two-building complex, which has a total of 1.9 million sf at 205 N. Michigan Ave. and 225 N. Michigan Ave., is owned by New York City-based Loeb Partners Realty LLC, which acquired the property in December 2004 for approximately $273 million, sources say. The complex is 81% leased, says Buth, senior vice president and managing director of leasing services for MB Real Estate. The largest tenant in the complex is Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) which occupies all of the second through the sixth floors at 225 N. Michigan in addition to parts of the eighth and ninth floors.