An Oak Park-based marketing agency that has swelled in size in recent years is eyeing the city of Chicago to accommodate its growing space needs.
Siren Interactive, which was founded in 1999 and helps pharmaceutical companies reach out to potential clients through social media and search engines, has become increasingly successful, being named one of the 5,000 fastest growing companies in the country the past two years by Inc.com.
They have quadrupled their office space, up to 8,000 square feet, which is spread among multiple floors at the Shaker Building, 1100 Lake St. Employment, too, has surged from the start, from four staffers to the current 45, according to Wendy White, the founder and president of the company.
As such, they’re figuring out where to go next. Ideally, White said, they’d like to add as much as 4,000 square feet, and be located on one floor, rather than many. Roughly a third of the staff lives in the Oak Park area, and the only other possibility they’re eyeing besides the village is the West Loop.
“It’s challenging for us because we love being in Oak Park,” said White, who also lives in the village. “A huge proportion of our staff lives in Oak Park and River Forest, but it’s tricky.”
Doug Strubel, Siren’s vice president of operations, said they’re currently looking at several possible locations, and they hope to have something figured out by the end of this year. Siren’s lease at the Shaker Building expires in the middle of 2012, he added, and he said the West Loop is attractive because it’s convenient for Siren’s staff to reach.
White said they’ve held some initial conversations with the village and the Oak Park Development Corp. about the possibility of staying here. Village Manager Tom Barwin said village hall will make a push to retain the growing company, while working to attract other similar start-ups.
“We’re rooting for them and will certainly do whatever we can do to help them grow here,” he said.
Sara Faust, executive director of OPDC, a local nonprofit that receives tax dollars and works to spur economic development in the village, said finding Siren a new home is challenging, as only 18 percent of Oak Park office space is unoccupied, and large spaces can be hard to come by.
Siren’s area of focus is rare diseases, such as hemophilia and Huntington’s disease. It helps pharmaceutical companies narrow in on patients with such diseases through Facebook, Twitter and targeted Google results. In September, Inc. Magazine ranked the company 2,390 in its list of the 5,000 fastest growing companies in the country. Siren also made the list the previous year, at 3,723.