Old Main Post Office is ready for its close-up

CEO Todd Siwak shows off a lounge area in the Ferrara Candy Co. in the revamped Old Main Post Office, | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

It took nearly a billion dollars to do it, but Chicagoans’ way of thinking about the Old Main Post Office is about to be obsolete. What was a monument of decay on downtown’s southwestern edge is nearing its debut as a hub of commerce and socializing, designed with hipsters in mind.

As of Nov. 1, the building will welcome its first corporate tenant, Ferrara Candy, which is returning to its Chicago roots after a corporate sojourn in Oakbrook Terrace. The company has leased 118,000 square feet in the building, where it is relocating 400 headquarters workers and hoping to add another 200 next year.

Ferrara and Telos Group, the leasing agent for the Old Main Post Office, showed off the new abode Monday, along with public space on the first floor and a tenants-and-guests-only “grand boulevard’’ of amenities, such as a gym and a reimagined “college library” on the second floor. Gone are most remnants, but not all, of the building’s past as the largest post office on earth. It’s now the largest redevelopment in the nation, with 75 percent of its space committed to tenants, said Brian Whiting, Telos president.

The building uses its chief asset — space — to deliver custom-designed offices for companies that want to project a progressive image in a transit-friendly downtown location.

For Ferrara, it amounted to squinting hard to see the empty structure’s possibilities. “There were four-legged animals running around here,” said Ferrera CEO Todd Siwak. “It required us to really use our imaginations, and Telos did a great job of conveying the art of the possible. After we did our diligence, we thought this would be an ideal spot — a marquee location — for us to really invest ourselves.’’

The Ferrara space is replete with nooks for employee meetings large and small, easily had over coffee and its candy brands such as Brach’s, SweeTarts and Lemonheads.

Other companies moving into the Old Main Post Office in coming months include Walgreens and Uber.

The building, 433 W. Van Buren St., has astonished some real estate experts with its leasing activity. Whiting revealed one secret of his marketing strategy: Getting potential clients into The Vault.

It’s a richly appointed speakeasy-style space on the second floor suitable for imbibing and for presentations showing the offices post-renovation. The name was a reference to vaults that were in the actual post office to hold valuables traveling by mail.

Siwak agreed that The Vault was effective. “If we could use that to sell candy, we could never make enough candy,” he said.

New York-based 601W bought the property for $130 million in 2016 and with help from JP Morgan Chase arranged for $800 million to cover the renovation, a complex job because Ida B. Wells Drive runs through it and Amtrak trains travel beneath it.

The U.S. Postal Service moved out in 1996 and gone are its machinery and miles of conveyors. In designing the new lobby, the design firm Gensler Chicago worked part of the old conveyors into a lighting feature. A few spiraling mail chutes that sent packages from one floor to another have been kept for nostalgia.

But there’s no looking back now for investors and tenants in the massive landmark.

Escalators leading to the second floor of the revamped Old Main Post Office.

The grand lobby of the revamped Old Main Post Office.

Escalators leading to the second floor of the revamped Old Main Post Office.

Amenities in a common area for all tenants features a lounge in the former vault of the revamped Old Main Post Office.

One of two restored mail chutes in the Ferrara Candy Co. in the revamped Old Main Post Office.

The Ferrara Candy Co. in the revamped Old Main Post Office.

A restored scale will be used for “entertainment” in the Ferrara Candy Co. in the revamped Old Main Post Office.