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The smell of money along LaSalle Street is being overwhelmed by the musty scent of vacant office space.
Venerable financial institutions and law firms that once had to have LaSalle Street on their letterhead are now downsizing or heading west to Wacker Drive and the West Loop. For the few smaller tenants interested in filling the void, hard times along the street mean falling rents and plenty of space to choose from.
More than 1.5 million square feet of commercial office space either is vacant or soon will be on LaSalle Street and in the immediate area.
"LaSalle probably has the highest vacancy of any street in Chicago," says Menahem Deitcher, a senior vice-president at real estate firm CB Richard Ellis Inc. "If you go from the Board of Trade north, it's just unbelievable."
The street's allure is gone, Mr. Deitcher declares.
"It's just another street in the downtown office market," he says. "It'll be a low-cost alternative."
It was always an overstatement to label LaSalle Street between Madison Street and Jackson Boulevard as Wall Street West. Now, it's going the way of State Street, once considered the city's "great street" of shopping but supplanted by Michigan Avenue.
Firms are heading west for better views, more natural light and larger floor plates - amenities historic LaSalle Street just can't offer.
"There used to be a lot of companies that said, 'I'm a bank or a law firm and I want to be on LaSalle Street,' " says John Goodman, an executive vice-president at Chicago-based commercial real estate firm Julien J. Studley Inc. "I can't tell you I've heard many tenants tell me that in the last five years. It doesn't have the cachet or the relevance it had 15...