Chicago’s empty offices are growing food.
When COVID-19 sent office workers home in 2020, companies learned they could run with fewer permanent desks. Remote work has eased from its peak, but it is still more common than it was before the pandemic.
In early 2024, a Chicago Fed survey found that, in telework-friendly industries, the median share of employees working remotely at least four days a week remained 15 percentage points above pre-pandemic levels.
The effect on real estate arrived slowly. As leases expired, firms downsized, moved, or tried to sublease floors they no longer needed. By the second quarter of 2026, 26.8% of downtown Chicago office space was directly vacant, according to CBRE. ABC7 estimated that downtown held about 45 million square feet (4.2 million square meters) of empty offices.
That is where Farm Zero comes in.
Inside a 1,000-square-foot (93-square-meter) former law office across from City Hall, Farm Zero grows lettuce, herbs, microgreens, and edible flowers in stacked trays under LED lights. A recirculating hydroponic system feeds the roots without soil.
Farm Zero treats the surplus as growing space. Instead of building a specialized warehouse, it uses buildings that already have plumbing, electricity, ventilation, and climate control. A 2024 zoning change also opened downtown high-rises to urban agriculture.
The current farm supplies hundreds of Chicagoans through hospitals, restaurants, and direct sales. The company is now preparing a 10,000-square-foot (929-square-meter) basement farm at 125 S. Wacker Drive, ten times its present growing area.
Vertical farming is still hard. Lights, pumps, and cooling systems use a lot of electricity, and several companies have failed. Farm Zero is betting that reuse of existing buildings can cut those costs enough for the model to work.