The downtown Milwaukee office market, which has been soft for some time but has shown improvements in recent months, got some good news this week. Mequon-based Infinity HealthCare plans to move its headquarters to the Chase Tower at 111 E. Wisconsin Ave. in downtown Milwaukee.
The company will bring about 150 employees downtown and will occupy about 62,000 square feet of space on floors 19-21 in the Chase Tower, said Infinity HealthCare chief operating officer Gregory Cierlik. The move is expected to occur on March 1, he said.
The Chase Tower is owned by Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management Inc.’s Brookfield Real Estate Opportunity Group, which is represented by Kevin Armstrong of CB Richard Ellis. The fund bought the building a year ago for about $46 million.
Infinity HealthCare was represented by Mark Royal and Kimberly Penfold of Transwestern in brokering the lease.
With the addition of Infinity HealthCare the 22-story, 472,500-square-foot Chase Tower will still have about 63,000 square feet of available office space, Armstrong said.. The building’s occupancy rate had declined because Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek moved to Cathedral Place and JPMorgan Chase trimmed its Milwaukee operations.
"Infinity HealthCare is a welcome addition to Chase Tower at Water and Wisconsin," said Michelle Berliner, vice president of Brookfield Real Estate Opportunity Group. "We have put an aggressive plan in place to attract premier businesses to the building."
Infinity HealthCare offers emergency medicine, diagnostic imaging, occupational health, medical information systems, medical billing and medical practice management consulting services.
Infinity currently leases about 30,000 square feet of space at 1035 W. Glen Oaks Lane in Mequon. The company’s space is spread out in a couple different buildings.
"It was hard for us to find 50,000 to 60,000 square feet of contiguous space in Mequon," Cierlik said.
The company was also attracted to the downtown’s restaurant and cultural amenities, its access to the workforce and professional prestige of being downtown, he said.
