Highland Ventures leaving Glenview for Tennessee
A Glenview holding company whose Illinois roots date to the 1940s is moving to Tennessee.
Highland Ventures Ltd., 2500 Lehigh Ave., has announced it is moving to a 25,000-square-foot office in Brentwood, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville.
The Glenview firm will be vacating Illinois locations in Glenview, as well as in downstate Springfield. It anticipates opening its new office in September.
"The building and the booming (in Nashville) is just unbelievable. They have to build new roads because everything's happening there," said Highland Ventures President and CEO Keith Hoogland, a Glenview resident.
A release by the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development said Highland Ventures will invest $8.2 million to relocate its headquarters. The move will create 80 new jobs within five years, the article stated.
Hoogland said he felt discouraged with the business climate in Illinois.
Rather than complain about it, "I finally decided to vote with my feet," he said.
"Unfortunately, we feel that there are a lot of states out there that are doing great, and Illinois isn't one of them. It's one of the worst-run states in the country ... This isn't the state where we think our future lies," Hoogland said.
"Certainly we were disappointed to hear the news, but we remain confident the village of Glenview is a premier location in the Midwest to do business," Glenview Village President Mike Jenny told the Herald in an email.
In a release announcing the move on Highland Ventures' website, Hoogland stated: "Nashville is turning into a food service, health care and real estate hub that fits our growth strategy across all business lines."
Chief among Highland's holdings is Hoogland Foods, the largest franchisee of Marco's Pizza, the company stated on its website, with more than 100 locations in 19 states.
Highland Ventures also represents Legacy Commercial Property, which the parent company said owns more than $800 million in commercial real estate in 21 states.
Also among its holdings, the company runs 68 Highland Pure Water & Ice kiosks, which remove impurities from municipal water through reverse osmosis.
On July 22. the Glenview firm closed on a transaction with Heartland Veterinary Partners to purchase Highland's holdings of 16 Family Vet Group animal hospitals. Terms are undisclosed.
Highland Ventures Ltd. formerly held Family Video and Stay Fit interests, but those companies went out of business.
Hoogland, whose six children all attended Glenbrook South High School, said he enjoyed the fact he was able to commute only 8 minutes from his home to Highland Ventures in The Glen at Lehigh Avenue, south of Willow Road.
His grandfather, Clarence, started Midstates Appliance in 1946 in Springfield. Hoogland's father, Charlie, ran Midstates starting in 1953, Keith Hoogland said, and founded Family Video, an offshoot of the parent company, in 1978 in Springfield.
Keith Hoogland, a graduate of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said he started running Family Video around 1994, and subsequently expanded the company into Highland Ventures Ltd.
His great-grandfather, Charles Gustav Hoogland, arrived in Illinois from Sweden in 1870.
Among the Hoogland family's philanthropic interests are the Hoogland Lymphoma Biobank at University of Chicago Medicine and the Hoogland Center for the Arts in Springfield.
Two of Keith and Susan Hoogland's sons currently work for Highland Ventures, one of them already living in Nashville. Keith Hoogland hopes all of his children eventually join him and his wife near the city.
"I'll always have a presence here. I have a lot of friends and a lot of business associates and a great network of business people, so I'll always have a presence in Chicago, and I may have an office here. But the corporate office is going to move to Tennessee and my home will be in Tennessee also," Hoogland said.
"For the corporation to stay here just doesn't make sense any longer, from my standpoint. And it's too bad."