After slicing nearly 10 % of its workforce, rolling again salaries and freezing hiring, Automobiles.com is including one other cost-cutting measure to climate the COVID-19 storm: shedding actual property.

The corporate this week listed one-third of its Chicago headquarters on the sublease market, in accordance with a flyer from brokerage CBRE.

The 52,752-square-foot providing on the eleventh flooring of the West Loop constructing provides the net automobile market to the rising checklist of corporations attempting to unload workplace house amid the COVID-19 disaster. Some have achieved so within the wake of sweeping layoffs whereas others have listed house after discovering lots of their workers will be simply as environment friendly working from dwelling.

Automobiles.com’s transfer comes about 4 months after it introduced it will lay off 170 workers as car-buying demand plummeted after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March. The corporate additionally froze hiring, diminished salaries and slashed its advertising and marketing bills by 40 % year-over-year within the second quarter, in accordance with a regulatory submitting. That partially offset a giant dip in income to $102 million in the course of the quarter, which was 31 % lower than it pulled in throughout the identical interval in 2019.

However the firm has a protracted dedication forward at 300 S. Riverside, the place it signed a roughly 158,000-square-foot lease for its headquarters in a 2016 relocation and enlargement. That deal runs via June 2031, in accordance with actual property info firm CoStar Group.

“We took our 1,500-person firm digital in March as a consequence of COVID-19,” Automobiles.com spokeswoman Christine Spinelli mentioned in an emailed assertion. “As a expertise firm with {a partially} distant workforce previous to the pandemic, we have been totally ready with the infrastructure and assets to take care of manufacturing and innovation as all of our workers transitioned to a distant work mannequin.

“We’re aligning our workplace house with what we might want to proceed working successfully on this new world, and have determined to sublease a few of our workplace house quickly as a part of that course of.”

The itemizing dealer is taking part in up the 300 S. Riverside house as “plug and play” workplaces with 316 desks and 27 convention rooms well-suited for a tech firm consumer.

Crain’s Chicago Enterprise is an affiliate of Automotive Information.