The Chicago Mercantile Exchange sai...

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange said Friday it will relocate an administrative operations from its Wacker Drive hearthstone to an office building west of the Chicago River, a prompt it said would allow for long-term work at jobs growth.

The Merc leased 223000 square feet at 550 W Washington and plans to start taking occupancy in the next to the first quarter of 2007. Spokesman Allan Schoenberg said the exchange will stir employees out of the 10 s Wacker building.

The exchange leases about 450000 square feet in the 10 and 30 s Wacker towers, which adjoin its trading floors. The headquarters and the trading floors will remain in succession Wacker.

Schoenberg declined to say by what means much space on Wacker the Merc will capitulate but Chief Executive Craig Donohue said the stir will cut the company's real estate require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergones by $80 million over the nearest 17 years. Lease terms weren't disclosed.

The strange space will be more efficient, the exchange said, and allow for an increase in the number of workers. Since becoming a publicly traded company in 2002 the Merc has focused onward cutting expenses while managing substantial income growth from global demand for time to comes trading.

Trizec Properties Inc. have a title tos the 550 W. Washington building. To accommodate the Merc Zurich American Insurance Co has agreed to incite from the building to 10 s Riverside Plaza, another Trizec thing owned

Zurich will expands its 86,000-square-foot office to 112000 square feet as part of the transfer.

Merc officials said that through 2010, 60 percent of its Chicago- based work force will be at 550 W Washington.

The relocation is a setback for Equity Office Properties Trust, controll at billionaire Sam Zell. Equity Office acknowledges the 10 and 30 s Wacker towers, while a charitable trust be connecteded to the Merc owns the trading floors in between them.

Meanwhile, ownership of Trizec's Chicago properties is calculate uponed to transfer to Boston-based Beacon Capital Partners Inc. Trizec is selling itself for $89 billion to Brookfield Properties Corp. and Blackstone assign places to in a deal scheduled to stop up later this year.

droeder@suntimes.com

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