Cook County

Towers where the freight elevator runs the schedule

Class A towers, law and finance tenancies, union buildings and landmark lobbies between the river and Congress, plus the converted stock west of the Kennedy.

Request a walkthrough Talk to operations

Two uniformed janitorial technicians cleaning an empty Chicago office floor at night with the lit Loop skyline behind the windows

41Buildings on programme in the Loop and West Loop
4.2MCleanable sq ft in this submarket
12 minDrive from the Fulton Market yard
18:00Standard crew start after tenant departure

What is actually different about the Loop and West Loop

The operational constraint in a Loop tower is not the cleaning. It is vertical transport. One or two freight cars serve the whole stack, they are shared with every other trade in the building, and they are booked. A crew that has not been allocated freight time spends its shift waiting in a lobby.

So a Loop scope starts with the building engineer rather than with the floor plate. Which car, which hours, which floors on which nights, and what happens on a night when a tenant move-in takes the freight for six hours.

The second constraint is stone. Loop lobbies are full of honed marble, granite and terrazzo, and a great deal of it has been damaged by contractors treating it like VCT. Stone gets a maintenance programme of its own, and it never gets a wax coat.

Union buildings

A large share of the Loop stock operates under a collective bargaining agreement, and the jurisdiction rules affect which tasks we are permitted to perform and at what rate. We work in both union and non union buildings and we will tell you at the walkthrough which structure your building needs.

Where an agreement applies, the labour rate, the crew structure and sometimes the scope boundaries change. A bid that ignores this in a union tower is not a cheaper bid, it is a bid that will be re-priced.

Landmark and historic lobbies

Several buildings we service are landmarked, which restricts what may be applied to original stone, bronze and terrazzo. Bronze in particular is unforgiving: an aggressive cleaner strips a patina that took eighty years to develop and cannot be put back.

Where a building has landmark status the approved product list is agreed with the building engineer and the ownership group before a single bottle enters the property.

Tenant density and the after hours window

Law and finance tenants work late. A crew arriving at 18:00 in a litigation practice is cleaning around people until 21:00 or later, which is why the Loop scope typically zones floors and works the vacated portions on a rotation rather than pretending the building empties at six.

Building types we run here

Portfolio composition, Chicago Loop and West Loop
Building type	How it is run
Class A office towers	Multi tenant, 200,000 to 1,200,000 sq ft, freight scheduled
Converted loft office	West Loop and Fulton Market, exposed structure, high dust load
Law and finance tenancies	Late working, confidential paper, zoned rotation
Ground floor retail and lobby	Stone maintenance, entrance glass, matting at volume
Building amenity floors	Fitness, conference centres, tenant lounges, day porter driven

Programmes

Available across the Loop and West Loop

Questions

About the Loop and West Loop

Can you work in a union building?

Yes, and we do in several Loop towers. We work within the applicable agreement and its jurisdiction rules, which affects the labour rate, the crew structure and occasionally which tasks fall to us rather than to building staff. Tell us at the walkthrough, because a bid priced without it is a bid that gets re-priced.

How do you handle freight elevator scheduling?

We agree it with the building engineer before mobilisation and we build the crew route around it, floor by floor and night by night. On a night when the freight is lost to a tenant move-in the route shifts to the floors reachable on the passenger cars, and the missed floors are picked up on the next pass rather than skipped.

Do you maintain stone lobbies?

Yes, and it is a distinct programme from hard floor care. Honed marble, granite and terrazzo are restored mechanically by diamond honing and polishing, never coated with a floor finish. If a previous contractor has already put a wax coat on your stone, we will tell you what it costs to take it back off before you decide.

Other service areas

Book a walkthrough of your building

Ninety minutes on site with an account manager and an operations lead. You leave with a measured cleanable square footage, a draft scope of work and a price, in writing, within five business days.

Request a walkthrough Call (312) 555-0148