F&O Pulls Out of Sullivan Center

By Karl Klockars in News on Nov 3, 2008 7:00PM

Gourmet grocery Fox and Obel gave Loop-bound foodies reason to rejoice when they announced an outlet on State Street, located in the former Carson Pirie Scott building. Hope you didn't count those farm-raised cage-free organic jumbo brown-shell eggs before they hatched, foodies - Crains reports that F&O has pulled out of that deal, along with Australian surf-gear retailer Billabong. (We're sure that this hurts all those Chicago surfers and aficionados of cargo shorts as well, but we've got a shiny nickel on Loop lunchers being more directly affected.)

This leaves a combined 40,000 square feet of space up for grabs; this on top of the nearly half-million square feet of new retail space coming to the State Street corridor in the Sullivan Center and the Block 37 project. Bruce Kaplan, a three-decade leasing agent for retail space with CB Richard Ellis Inc., has the following great news:

"The meltdown in the financial markets and retail world is not coming at the best moment for these two projects...This is, without a doubt, the scariest period in retail that I've ever been confronted with."

Only Flat Top Grill remains as a future tenant in the Carson's building, located at State and Madison. It's not all bad news - the Sun-Times is reporting that the office portion of the building is nearly 80 percent leased, and renovations have "gone well."

Carson Pirie Scott and Company via WallyG.