Naperville 'very disappointed' at ConAgra's plans to leave

Naperville economic development leaders want to meet with representatives of ConAgra Foods to learn details of the company's reported plans to move its offices to Chicago.

ConAgra leases 165,000 square feet in a building at 215 Diehl Road in Naperville, but Christine Jeffries of the Naperville Development Partnership and Mayor Steve Chirico both say they've heard reports the company is looking to leave town. Chirico called the news "very disappointing."

"I'd hate to lose a big employer like that," Chirico said about the food company, which employs roughly 400 people at its Naperville office. "It's a big piece of office space that we're now going to have to fill."

Crain's Chicago Business reported ConAgra is negotiating a lease of a 200,000-square-foot space inside the Merchandise Mart in Chicago's River North neighborhood.

However, ConAgra spokeswoman Lanie Friedman said, "No decisions have been made regarding our Naperville presence. Our normal practice is to conduct market cost analyses and carefully study our options before our leases expire. This situation is no different."

Toni McIntosh, a Merchandise Mart leasing officer, and Andrea Saewitz, a leasing agent with J.F. McKinney, a Cushman Wakefield company working with the Merchandise Mart, both declined to comment.

ConAgra Foods came to Naperville in 2004 after completing a major renovation of a building previously used by Allied Van Lines, Jeffries said. The company chose the location because of demographic research that found a cluster of employees already lived in Naperville.

But in recent years, Jeffries said a large number of ConAgra employees have been reverse commuting from Chicago - so many that the company worked with the city and the Development Partnership to begin running its own shuttles from express trains out of Chicago arriving at the Naperville Metra station to the office.

Companies moving from the suburbs to the city - or vice versa - happens in an ebb and flow as employers consider the lifestyle preferences of the types of workers they'd like to attract, Jeffries said.

"It's always a little bit of a decision that has to be made by the company," Jeffries said. "Are they going to try and recruit more of the young people that would live in downtown Chicago, or is it a reverse commute for those folks to be able to recruit a higher number of young families here in the suburbs."

Jeffries said ConAgra employees haven't yet responded to her request to set up a meeting about the company's plans. She said she's heard conflicting reports about the time remaining on ConAgra's lease in Naperville - it could be as little as eight months or more than three years.

"Our hope is first of all that they would remain in Naperville, but if they are relocating to Chicago, that they would retain all their employees," Jeffries said. "If it is true and they are relocating to the city of Chicago, we're certainly disappointed and quite sad to see them leave."

• Daily Herald staff writer Anna Marie Kukec contributed to this report.