High office vacancy rates force Huntley to find other uses for business park

Huntley is trying to get some more businesses into a corporate park near the Interstate 90-Route 47 interchange.

Village officials want to expand the permitted uses in the corporate park in an effort to attract more businesses. That could include product research and development, light manufacturing and food processing, though anyone seeking to set up such a business in the area of Jim Dhamer Drive would need a special use permit, according to village documents.

Huntley Director of Development Services Charlie Nordman said the village has gotten general inquiries about those uses.

The changes would apply to land that has two segments, one southwest of and touching Route 47 and Jim Dhamer Drive, and one further west on Jim Dhamer Drive near the Sun City subdivision. At a Monday plan commission meeting, Nordman confirmed that is the only corporate park district in the village.

Nordman said the corporate park has been around for 30 years. In that time, according to village documents, only two enterprises have set up shop there. Those are Life Spine, which bought a building formerly home to Duo-Fast but after the structure had been vacant for a decade, and an Advocate Outpatient Clinic. Both buildings are located on a cul-de-sac at the end of Quality Drive, which is the first street to intersect Jim Dhamer Drive west of Route 47.

Village documents indicate there are 82 acres of vacant land in the district.

In the information packet provided for Monday’s plan commission meeting, village officials included two recent articles on the state of office space in the Chicago suburbs. One article, which came out earlier this summer, stated the office vacancy rate tops 32% in the Northwest region of the Chicago area, which covers areas near O’Hare Airport and western Cook County, northeastern Kane County, most of McHenry County and southwestern Lake County.

The other article, from late 2022, talked about the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on office space as work from home became mainstreamed. It cited Allstate selling its corporate campus in Glenview to Dermody, who planned to build a logistics park on the site.

While the Huntley Plan Commission didn’t discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on corporate parks, Nordman said office uses are a “long-shot” at that location.

The commission unanimously approved sending the changes over to the village board, with members Jeff Peterson, Terra De Baltz, Joseph Holtorf and chair Dawn Ellison voting in favor. Commission members Ron Hahn, Dennis O’Leary and Don Walz were absent.

With the changes, officials are hopeful there could be more interest in the corporate park. Light manufacturing already is present further west on Jim Dhamer Drive, Nordman said.

“We continue to try to market” these properties, Nordman said.