The move will bring another high-profile tenant within steps of the trendy former meatpacking district, which has continued to draw new companies and residents over the past three years, even as the COVID-19 pandemic slowed leasing and development in other parts of downtown.

Barstool also will add more activity to the area immediately west of Fulton Market, where new apartment projects are underway, a new Metra station is in the early planning stages and where advanced manufacturing incubator mHub will move its operations from River West.

The deal fills up the remainder of a building that a venture of Fulton Market developer Shapack Partners and Magnetar Capital founder Alec Litowitz bought in 2019 for $6.5 million, according to Cook County property records. Shapack signed a 17,000-square-foot lease in the building last year with NanoGraf, a battery technology company co-founded by Samir Mayekar, now a deputy Chicago mayor. The building was previously home to food distribution company MT Food Service.

Spokesmen for Shapack and Barstool Sports did not respond to requests for comment, and it’s unclear how many jobs will come to Chicago with the move. But hosts of Barstool Sports popular “Pardon My Take” podcast described plans for the new headquarters during a March 1 episode. The new office is slated to include a full-size basketball court, a golf simulator, music recording and kitchen studios, and other space for content creation.

“The amount of content that we’re going to be able to create day to day is going to be insane just by the space that we have,” said co-host Dan “Big Cat” Katz, who was previously based in Chicago before moving to New York. Barstool today has a Chicago office at 855 W. Belmont Ave. in Lakeview.

Barstool was founded in 2003 by Dave Portnoy as a free sports and gambling newspaper and grew into a digital platform with a wide variety of shows and a large following. In 2020, Wyomissing, Pa.-based Penn acquired 36% of Barstool for $163 million, a partnership that included the debut and expansion of the Barstool Sportsbook, a mobile betting platform that began operating in Illinois in 2021. Penn announced in February that it had acquired the remaining interest in Barstool for about $388 million.

Penn said in a statement in February that Barstool Sports podcasts have been downloaded 1.6 billion times since 2020.

Cushman & Wakefield brokers Jeff Skender, Scott Shelbourne and Ari Klein negotiated the lease on behalf of Barstool Sports. Shapack Partners’ Paige O’Neil and Annie Aldrich oversee leasing at 400 N. Noble.