CHICAGO—The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, known as Ohio PERS, has extended the headquarters lease here for APICS The Association for Operations Management, an organization dedicated to the supply chain and operations industry.
The organization agreed to extend its 32,295-sq.-ft. office lease at U.S. Cellular Plaza at 8430 West Bryn Mawr in Chicago, near O’Hare International Airport. Transwestern represented the tenant in the deal.
Tony Karmin, executive vice president at Transwestern, said the organization appreciates the size of the building’s floor plates and access to public transportation, as well as naming rights for the building. “The lease extension represents a much-needed boost to the O’Hare office market where direct vacancy remains high at 25.7 percent,” said he said in a statement. The 640,000-sq.-ft. U.S. Cellular building is an anomaly at 82 percent leased, Karmin said.
The organization moved its headquarters here in 2009 from Alexandria, Va., in the Washington, DC market. “Chicago is a strong international destination,” said Abe Eshkenazi, CEO at APICS. “Its role as a strategic transportation access point makes it a consistent center for activity in the supply chain and operations management arena.”
Jason Simon and Francis Prock with Colliers International represented Charlotte, N.C.-based asset manager Faison & Associates LLC in the lease extension. Faison manages the building on behalf of Ohio PERS, which bought a large share of the building from Parkway Properties in early 2011.