Alcatel-Lucent still wants to sell Lisle offices
Alcatel-Lucent said Wednesday it remains steadfast in its mission to consolidate operations by selling its Lisle offices and has been interviewing brokers, despite a tough real estate market for commercial and industrial properties.
The beleaguered Paris-based telecommunications company, with operations in Naperville and Lisle from the former Lucent Technologies, said it doesn't have a timeline for the sale or likely value for the property.
"We're just in the initial stages right now," said Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman Denise Panyik-Dale.
The company has no plans to rent the Lisle building and it will remain vacant until sold, said Panyik-Dale.
The Daily Herald reported in April that the former Lucent Technologies firm was moving its remaining workers from the Lisle to offices in Naperville. Only 3,400 workers remain here today, compared to about 10,500 during its heyday in 2001.
An internal memo obtained by the Daily Herald last April said Alcatel-Lucent "made a number of changes to our business aimed at improving efficiencies, productivity and overall competitiveness. This includes making more efficient use of our real estate portfolio. After a careful review of our facilities in North America, we have made the decision to consolidate the number of buildings at our Lisle/Naperville campus and exit our facility in Whippany, N.J."
The Lisle offices have a total of 1.2 million square feet on Warrenville Road and Lucent Lane. Workers there support the carrier business unit, which enables service providers, enterprise and governments worldwide with voice, data and video communications services for consumers and others. This includes fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, Internet Protocol technologies, applications and services.
The once-bustling Lisle-Naperville campus of Lucent Technologies has been feeling the tremors of a shaky technology industry and a major merger with Alcatel in 2006. Now it faces a tough real estate market that has pummeled both residential and business properties with lower values and numerous foreclosures throughout the region.
Buildings like Alcatel Lucent's could take a couple of years to sell during these tough economic times, compared to about six months during better times, said John Rutledge, a commercial real estate consultant with his own firm, Rutledge Co. LLC, in Wheaton.
"The debt market is afraid of real estate right now and it's tougher to fund it," said Rutledge.
In 2000, Lucent declined to give an exact cost of the new building construction, but the project was estimated at around $250 million, according to Daily Herald reports. The Lisle offices opened in the summer of 2001. Then the tech bubble burst and thousands of jobs were eliminated.