JPMorgan bets $800M on Chicago Loop with Chase Tower renovations

We finally know what it’ll cost to rebuild one of the biggest office towers in the Loop: more than $800 million.

This is what JPMorgan Chase will be investing in Chase Tower, CEO Jamie Dimon confirmed during his visit to Chicago just this week. While the bank had announced the project back in February 2024, it had never said what it would cost up until now. Dimon called the rebuild "a long-term investment," he told Crain's Chicago Business after walking through the construction.

The 60-story tower at 10 S. Dearborn St. has room for a whopping 7,200 workers, roughly half of the total number of professionals the bank employs around Chicagoland. Indeed, JPMorgan will be spending $800 million to keep a workforce the size of a small town coming downtown every day.

What $800 million buys

The work will cover the whole building, from the plaza out front to the top floors.

Outside, the bank is redoing the plaza with new seating, a cover overhead and new landscaping, plus easier access to Marc Chagall's "Four Seasons" mosaic, the 1974 artwork that has sat in the plaza for over half a century.

Inside the lobby, the mezzanine and the food hall are being rebuilt, and a gym is going in on the lobby level with a yoga and cycling room, not to mention quiet rooms for prayer and meditation. Additionally, offices upstairs are getting new furniture, new technology, and new meeting rooms.

A major renovation was revealed in September, when the bank unveiled a remodeled client center on the 57th floor. Crain's called it the crown jewel of the project.

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Why the renovation is such a big deal

Chicago’s Downtown comeback has mostly come from landlords turning empty offices into apartments rather than from companies pouring cash into the offices themselves.

JPMorgan’s gone the other way, and it won’t be alone this fall. Morningstar said in September that it will move its headquarters and more than 1,500 Chicago workers into the Thompson Center in late 2028, sharing the remodeled building with Google. Both companies are betting that an address downtown is still worth paying for.

When the bank announced the project, it said the construction alone would create more than 970 local jobs and put $264 million into Cook County's economy and $377 million into the state's. It set a goal of giving 35% of the contracts to local businesses owned by women and people of color. The finished building is expected to meet green building standards and use 35% less water.

The architecture firm Gensler is running the redesign. The tower first opened in 1969 as First National Plaza, and its curved sides have been a Loop landmark ever since.

What it means for our Loop

Dimon spent two days in Chicago this week, where he appeared at both the Economic Club of Chicago on Wednesday and WTTW's "Chicago Tonight," where he argued that no city is owed its success.

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"Cities, companies and countries — no one has a divine right to success," he told WTTW. What decides it, he said, is whether a city has good schools and hospitals, low crime, jobs and room for employers to grow.

Asked about the city's proposed tax on companies based on how many people they employ, he noted a tax like that usually leads to fewer jobs, not more.

Regardless of the latest developments, JPMorgan has been in Chicago since its early days when it acquired Bank One in 2004. The bank says it now works with about 415,000 small businesses in the area. For JPMorgan, Chicago’s future looks brighter than ever.