Digital
arts school looks to sublease Loop home
Flashpoint Chicago is moving its downtown campus
to Roosevelt University as it looks to cut costs amid the COVID-19 crisis.
The Burnham Center at 111 W. Washington St
Flashpoint Chicago has put its Loop campus up
for sublease, joining the crowd of downtown tenants trying to offload real
estate amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The digital arts and media school this month
listed its nearly 38,000-square-foot classroom and studio space in the Burnham
Center at 111 W. Washington St. after recently announcing a deal to move its
campus to Roosevelt University's building at 425 S. Wabash Ave.
Formerly known as Tribeca Flashpoint College
before it was acquired in 2018 by Los Angeles-based film and arts school
Columbia College Hollywood, Flashpoint restructured its space at the Burnham
Center less than a year ago. It vacated the fifth floor at the historic
building but retained the sixth floor on a lease that runs through August 2027.
But with classes running virtually this summer because of the COVID-19 crisis,
Columbia College Hollywood President and CEO Bill Smith announced July 28 that
the school had reached an agreement with Roosevelt to move its Loop campus to
the Wabash building but remain an independent institution.
"It's partly economic and partly
strategic," Smith said of the effort to offload its Burnham Center space,
adding that he expects virtual classes will continue "at least through the
end of the year."
"Every institution in higher education has
been upended thanks to the pandemic," he said. "As the world changes,
you're just trying to be as efficient as you can."
Flashpoint's move underscores both the struggle
colleges are enduring as the coronavirus jeopardizes their ability to hold
classes in person and the pandemic's impact on a downtown office market
that is suddenly awash in available space for sublease.
As of early this month, the amount of sublease
space on the downtown market had risen by 26 percent since April 1 and 47
percent since the beginning of the year to 4.1 million square feet, according
to brokerage CBRE. That helped drive up the overall downtown office vacancy
rate to its highest mark since 2011, CBRE data shows.
Many of the secondary market listings are gently
used spaces, creating formidable competition for landlords hunting for tenants.
In one new offering, construction firm Skender listed its
38,000-square-foot headquarters at 1330 W. Fulton St. in the Fulton Market
District, where it moved when the building was completed in 2017.
Flashpoint, which offers bachelor's degrees in
cinema, graphic design and visual effects among other liberal arts programs,
has housed its Loop campus at the Burnham Center since it was founded in 2007
by Chicago entrepreneur Howard Tullman. With enrollment of about 600 students
in 2012, the school signed a 15-year lease extension in the building that
would have allowed it to expand to as much as 150,000 square feet and give it
room to double its student capacity.
But enrollment has shrunk since then: The school
has about 200 students for its summer 2020 session and expects to have close to
300 in the fall, Smith said.
Higher education institutions have historically
seen enrollment rise during economic downturns as the unemployed hunt for new
career training. But Smith said it's "anybody's guess" whether that
will be the case with the circumstances presented by the pandemic.
"Some of these students are making so many
choices—taking time off, taking classes remotely, taking less classes," he
said. "It has impacted us in a number of ways."
With expenses mostly unchanged, however, tuition
for Flashpoint Chicago remains the same at around $25,000 per year despite
classes running virtually.
Flashpoint's space at the Burnham Center stands out from many
other offices on the sublease market with its built-in sound design and music
recording space, said Michael Richwine of brokerage @properties Commercial,
which is marketing the space on behalf of Flashpoint Chicago.