Hungry for a change: Mondelez moving HQ to Thor Equities building in Fulton Market

Snack maker Mondelez International is moving its global headquarters to Fulton Market, taking 77,100 square feet of office space in a Thor Equities building at 905 West Fulton Street.

The long-term lease for all five floors of the building also includes 6,150 square feet of retail space, company officials announced Monday night.

In moving its headquarters from Deerfield, the maker of Oreos, Chips Ahoy cookies, Ritz crackers and dozens of other snacks becomes the latest Chicago-area company to desert the suburbs for Downtown.

Mondelez follows Ferrara Candy, which is in talks to shift its headquarters to 601W Companies’ redeveloped Old Main Post Office in the West Loop from Oak Brook.

In picking Fulton Market, Mondelez joins McDonald’s, Google, Uber and others in grabbing office space in a neighborhood that is swiftly being transformed from a gritty meatpacking and wholesale food center into a trendy area filled with offices and retailers.

Millions of square feet of new office space is in the works in the neighborhood, thanks to the efforts of a number of developers, including Sterling Bay, Shapack Partners and Thor.

Thor has been turning its attention to Fulton Market recently, selling off several State Street retail properties it owned. A block over from the Mondelez building, Thor wants to build a 20-story office complex with ground-floor retail at the gateway to Fulton Market, one of several properties it owns in the neighborhood.

It also owns the historic 1,639-key Palmer House Hilton at 17 East Monroe Street. Earlier this year, Thor took out a $427 million loan on the hotel, and it signed three retailers to leases combining for more than 20,000 square feet.

The company said the Mondelez building features three distinct facades, contiguous floor plates, a landscaped terrace and green roof, and 300 feet of retail frontage. Some 10,000 square feet of retail space remains available for lease in the building, Thor said.