Sterling Bay, the developer behind Google’s Fulton Market headquarters and the $6 billion Lincoln Yards megadevelopment, said it “had to make the tough decision” to cut 10 jobs. According to its website, the firm employs approximately 185 individuals. It refuses to say further.
The layoffs occur as real estate companies, ranging from big brokerages to landlords and developers, remain vulnerable to recessionary headwinds and rising interest rates. Both CBRE and JLL have announced layoffs in their commercial brokerages, and national residential brokerages Compass and Anywhere Real Estate have already announced workforce cutbacks this year.
Pacaso, a proptech business, also laid off employees late last year. Furthermore, Anywhere’s Coldwell Banker Real Estate plans to close several locations in the Chicago area.
The layoffs come on the heels of Sterling Bay’s previous CFO, Michael Keesey, leaving the company. Keesey, who had been with the development firm since 2014, resigned in August and is now CFO at Partners Enterprise Capital, a Chicago-based real estate investment firm. Mike Beringer, Sterling Bay’s new CFO, joined the company in November after working for the Blackstone-owned Revantage for more than five years. It’s unclear whether the change in the company’s finance leadership influenced the decision to lay off workers.
The firm, led by Andy Gloor and Keating Crown, is still working on a number of significant projects, including the 24-story, 490,000-square-foot office building at 360 North Green Street in Fulton Market, where Boston Consulting already occupies 200,000 square feet. It was also chosen by Ken Griffin’s Citadel to construct a new 1-million-square-foot office skyscraper in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood after the billionaire hedge funder announced his firm’s relocation from Chicago to South Florida.
Other prominent buildings by Sterling Bay in Chicago include Google offices at 320 North Morgan Street in Fulton Market and McDonald’s headquarters at 110 North Carpenter Street.. The firm gained city approval for the 53-acre Lincoln Yards multi-phase project between the Wicker Park, Bucktown and Lincoln Park neighborhoods in 2019, and work on its first commercial building at 1229 West Concord Place, set to be a life sciences asset, is nearly finished.
