Elk Grove Village tackles business park vacancies with new tool

Elk Grove Village has developed a new online resource for businesses looking to locate in town and to help tackle vacancies at its business park.

The village’s 5-square-mile business park employs more than 100,000 people in a diverse mix of local, national and international companies. Its vacancy rate has increased to about 12 percent, according to officials.

A link on the main page of the village website, elkgrove.org, leads to a searchable database of vacant sites and buildings. At present, 87 properties are listed along with specifics on each site, including a map of the location, photos, building square footage and dimensions, information on neighboring businesses, and details about the demographics, labor force, and consumer spending in the area, and the real estate broker’s contact information.

In the coming weeks, more properties will be added to the database and the kinks worked out before the village officially launches the service through an international marketing campaign, said Josh Grodzin, the village’s newly hired director of business development and marketing.

“With this business park so close to O’Hare (International Airport), it just cries out for a tool to promote it,” said Grodzin, who formerly served as assistant administrator of economic development for DuPage County. “This is a big piece of our marketing efforts.”

The software, developed by California-based GIS Planning, combines the Internet with Geographic Information System technology. It costs the village $6,400 a year.

“We’re the only municipality in Illinois that has a GIS Planning product,” Grodzin said. “They kind of wrote the book on Internet marketing for economic development.”

Officials will be marketing the resource through direct mail postcards sent to businesses nationwide and internationally, as well as at real estate and industrial trade shows and on YouTube.