United starts moving workers from Elk Grove
As United Continental Holdings Inc. workers started their exodus from the Elk Grove Township operations center on Monday, prospective buyers have been kicking the cornerstone for possible uses of the campus.
The 66-acre property has been seen by so-called “large users as well as developers who could split up the property into several parcels for different uses. A commercial broker is aiming to close a deal in the next 12 to 18 months, the same time frame United has to move its 2,500 workers from the site.
“We've been entertaining multiple offers and scenarios, said David Matthews, executive vice president of Jones Lang LaSalle, the commercial real estate broker in Chicago hired by United to sell the property.
The campus has been for sale for about a year, after United announced it would move those workers into the Willis Tower in downtown Chicago. The new building offered state-of-the-art technology, versus its Elk Grove facility that would be too costly to upgrade, the airline said. United also had received an attractive tax incentive plan that included grants, a TIF arrangement and job training to seal the deal with Willis.
Matthews said he couldn't reveal the names of prospective buyers due to confidentiality agreements but said both large companies and developers have eyed the property. The likely scenario is either multiple transactions to divide the property initially, or a developer who buys the whole campus and later divides it for various uses.
In this tight real estate market, any of those scenarios would be good news to Elk Grove Township, said township Supervisor Nanci L. Vanderweel.
“In today's climate, for a parcel that big, it would take some doing, Vanderweel said.
It would be up to Cook County to consider any rezoning requests, she said, unless the property is annexed to a bordering suburb such as Mount Prospect. No such move is pending.
In the meantime, United started its move-out with 280 workers settling into new quarters in Willis Tower on Monday.
That group is part of the first 1,000 workers moving between now and December. Phase 2 will include the remaining 1,500 workers, who will leave in the next 18 months, said United Continental spokesman Mike Trevino.
“This is just the beginning of the first phase, Trevino said.
The long-struggling United, which finalized its merger with Continental Airlines on Oct. 1, had already shifted its corporate functions with about 350 workers, including its top executives, to another office on Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago.
United opened its Elk Grove Township campus in 1961 and had as many as 4,300 workers there in the early 2000s. The campus' operations center was used to track the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist hijackings.
The site has about 1.7 million square feet of office space, but about 40 percent of it hasn't been used in recent years.