McDonald's opens its global headquarters in Chicago An area of ​​490,000 square feet which also includes the Hamburger University

McDonald's chooses Chicago. After 47 years in the suburbs, the multinational returns to the city where it has had its headquarters from 1955 to 1971 and does so with a state-of-the-art global headquarters, designed to optimize employee collaboration. With its 490,000 square feet spread over nine floors, the new building occupies the entire block along Randolph Street between Carpenter and Aberdeen Street, in the West Loop district, where, until recently, the Harpo Studios of Oprah Winfrey stood.

The new HQ of McDonald's also hides a novelty: the Hamburger University (HU), a cutting-edge learning place for employees and future company leaders. The interior design alternates elegant work spaces equipped with modern mid-century furniture to details related to the company's past as a long corridor that contains all the Happy Meal toys or as a huge black and white photo of Kroc and Fred Turner, one of McDonald's first employees, later became CEO and founder of the training program.