A slice of Chicago’s NBC Tower could soon stop hosting office workers and start housing apartment residents. Owner Metropolis Investment Holdings is eyeing a renovation of about a dozen floors in the high-rise’s mid-rise section, a move that could create hundreds of apartments inside one of Streeterville’s most recognizable buildings.
According to The Real Deal, Metropolis has partnered with Riverside Investment & Development and has been gathering city feedback on the proposal. The owner has also been shifting smaller tenants around to assemble roughly 300,000 square feet of contiguous vacancy that could be redeveloped.
The building’s office identity is not disappearing overnight. Metropolis Investment Holdings lists NBC Tower at nearly 897,000 rentable square feet, while Cushman & Wakefield describes the property as a Class A tower and longtime home of NBC Chicago’s WMAQ-TV.
A major vacancy is already looming: ComPsych is expected to leave its 152,000-square-foot NBC Tower space after 2026. The mental health services company has signed for a much smaller 50,000-square-foot headquarters at One Prudential Plaza, according to Commercial Property Executive.
Chicago’s Office Problem Is Creating A Residential Opening
The NBC Tower concept arrives as downtown Chicago’s office recovery remains uneven. CBRE reported that downtown net absorption was still negative in the second quarter, with direct vacancy at 26.8%, while REJournals said 25 office-to-residential projects were planned or underway across the central business district.
The strategy is not limited to older, low-profile buildings. Developers have increasingly looked at partial conversions in larger towers, preserving higher-demand office space while giving underused floors a new purpose — a more surgical approach than trying to reinvent an entire skyscraper at once.
City Review Could Keep The Proposal From Needing Full Rezoning
A March 6 letter from Chicago’s Department of Planning & Development suggested that the conversion could potentially move forward without a full City Council rezoning process, The Real Deal reported. That would remove one major procedural hurdle, but it is not the same as final approval or a construction permit.
Any redevelopment would still have to solve the unglamorous part of turning office floors into homes: plumbing, life-safety systems, residential entrances, elevators, ventilation and shared amenities, all while other tenants continue working in the tower. The result would likely be a hybrid building rather than a clean break from NBC Tower’s commercial past.
For Chicago, that may be the larger story. One of downtown’s signature office towers could be adapting floor by floor as the city tries to replace empty desks with residents, without waiting for an all-or-nothing rescue plan.
