Tall & Urban News

Downtown Chicago’s booming tech scene is in for another big jump. Accenture will be expanding into seven floors of the newly named Accenture Tower, bringing together in one location its roughly 6,200 Chicago-based staffers.

The company, which started as a spin-off of the old Arthur Andersen accounting firm, will be adding about 600 new jobs, most of them in tech, by 2022.

Accenture now has about 145,000 square feet (13,470 square meters) at 161 N. Clark St. in the central Loop, and about 70,000 square feet (6,503-square-meter) at 500 W. Madison, which is located near commuter railroad stations.

Accenture’s new lease at its namesake tower is for about 152,000 square feet (14,121 square meters), bringing its total footprint in the building to more than 226,000 square feet (20,996 square meters), according to a statement from KBS, a California-based private-equity firm which owns the building.

The company will also double its local apprenticeship program—a big item for Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Specifically, it committed to expand to 180 apprentices by the end of 2022 in conjunction with their existing City Colleges of Chicago partnership.

“Our clients, who are leaders in virtually every industry, are under tremendous pressure to harness the power of disruption for competitive advantage,” said Pallavi Verma, who heads Accenture’s Midwest unit. “With our continued investment in Chicago, we are bringing innovation to our clients, working side by side with them to reimagine their futures.”

The move by Accenture is the latest in a series as big tech firms look away from the coasts for young talent, which can be pricey to hire in San Francisco, New York, Washington, and Seattle.

The West Loop has become a hub for tech operations beyond traditional tech companies such as Google, which has about 1,000 workers in Fulton Market. Caterpillar’s digital team recently moved to 540 W. Madison, alongside Motorola Solutions who moved their headquarters to 500 W. Monroe St. three years ago. Salesforce is also building a new office tower on Wolf Point, just south of the Merchandise Mart.

Accenture took space at 500 W. Madison, turning it into an innovation hub, after it acquired digital marketing firm Acquity Group in 2013. The building was also home to the headquarters of travel technology company Orbitz, which was acquired by Expedia in 2015.

Chicago has long been a technology hub for Accenture and its predecessor, Andersen Consulting. Alumni include former Twitter CEO and FeedBurner co-founder Dick Costolo, Signal and FeedBurner co-founder Eric Lun, chief technology officer of Uptake, Greg Goff, and the founder of Solstice, J. Schwan.

For more on this story, go to Chicago Business.