Aug 28, 2007 1:06 pm US/Central
Merc Trading Floors To Be Turned Into Office Space
CME Recently Purchased Board Of Trade
CHICAGO (AP) ―
CME Group Inc., which operates the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade, announced an agreement Tuesday to sell the Merc's trading floors to a developer who will convert them to office space.
A charitable trust affiliated with the Merc, CME Trust, sold the trading floors to Tishman Speyer Properties LP for an undisclosed amount.
The deal will keep the financial exchange company's headquarters in the downtown complex it has occupied since 1983. It also ends speculation about what would happen to the cavernous trading space when floor trading shifts to the Board of Trade site six blocks away. CME's lease would have expired in November 2008 but now is extended through 2022.
The trading floors of CME, the world's largest financial exchange, already had been slated to move to the crosstown Board of Trade next spring in connection with the $11.9 billion acquisition that closed in July.
CME said its offices will occupy about 360,000 square feet in the Wacker Drive facility. It also said it has expanded into new office space located a few blocks away in the West Loop, in addition to the Board of Trade building.
Tishman Speyer said it will convert the current lower trading floor of the Merc building into office space with extensive renovations that will update the office space and amenities of the building. Fujikawa Johnson Gobel Architects, the original architect of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Center in the early '80s, is the architect for the project.
(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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