JPMorgan Chase workers won’t return to Downtown namesake tower

On Apr 28, 2021

Chase plans to vacate its office space in its Downtown tower, leaving only the sign and the bank branch.

JPMorgan Chase plans to move its office workers from its namesake Downtown tower to its McCoy Center campus in Polaris.

The move would leave a bank branch and a name as Chase’s only presence at the 25-story tower, which was built in 1964 as the headquarters for Chase’s Columbus predecessor.

“As we look to optimize our Columbus footprint, we have made the decision to bring more employees together at our Polaris campus,” said Chase spokeswoman Carlene Lule.

JPMorgan Chase occupies six floors of the 25-story Chase tower on East Broad Street.

The tower, at 100 E. Broad St., employs a tiny fraction of Chase’s 18,596 central Ohio workers, who are concentrated in the McCoy Center and in Easton and Westerville offices. In 2018, Chase launched a $200 million renovation of the McCoy Center.

Chase’s decision on its Downtown offices comes as it announces its return-to-office plans and follows CEO Jamie DImon’s comments that the bank was rethinking its real-estate needs after a year of working from home.

“Remote work will change how we manage our real estate,” Dimon wrote in his annual report to shareholders. “This will significantly reduce our need for real estate.”

The bank announced Tuesday that workers will begin returning to the office on May 17, but that offices will be kept at 50% capacity.

“We would fully expect that by early July, all U.S.-based employees will be in the office on a consistent rotational schedule, also subject to our current 50% occupancy cap,” according to the announcement.

When it was built in 1964, the 308,000-square-foot tower was the second-tallest building in central Ohio, behind only the LeVeque Tower.

For decades, it served as the headquarters of City National Corp, later Bank One, before the bank merged with NBD bank in 1998. Six years later, those combined banks became part of JPMorgan Chase.

Like other Downtown office towers, it has struggled to remain fully occupied in recent years, and in December 2019 was purchased by Lingerfelt CommonWealth Partners, a Virginia-based real estate investment firm, for $9.5 million.