(Above) Mayor Rahm Emanuel speaks at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday morning that opened Yelp’s office in Chicago. Photo by Danny Wurst, senior community manager at Yelp.

6-Mar-15 – Yelp will have 400 jobs in River North within a year and a half, now that its office has opened at Merchandise Mart.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel helped officially open the Chicago outpost of the San Francisco company that publishes crowd-sourced reviews of local businesses. Yelp has 60,000 square feet of office space on the fourth floor of Merchandise Mart.

“Yelp is a globally-recognized company and their decision to open a new Chicago office,” says Emanuel, “speaks to the talent we have today and the economic future we are building for tomorrow.”

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said last August his company would bring 300 jobs to Chicago and on Thursday he promised an extra 100 jobs.

Some of those workers will be found by Skills for Chicagoland’s Future, an organization funded in part by the City of Chicago to recruit qualified but underemployed job seekers. Yelp will work with the organization to hire area residents for account executive positions that pay, says the company, about $35,000 plus commission.