Schaumburg fills biggest empty industrial building

Schaumburg's largest vacant industrial building has found a new tenant.

Bartlett-based JIT Packaging has signed a five-year lease for the 304,800-square-foot building at 1365 Mitchell Blvd., which is owned by ProLogis.

A representative of JIT Packaging said the company will move its entire operation to the new Schaumburg location by Sept. 3.

Schaumburg's Economic Development Coordinator Matt Frank said the move is a big plus for the village, which will see its industrial building vacancy rate drop from 11.7 percent to about 8 percent.

Before the new lease, the industrial vacancy rate had barely changed in a year, from 11.8 percent in the second quarter of 2009, Acting Community Development Director Julie Summers said.

The next largest industrial vacancy is about half the size - an approximately 150,000-square-foot building - while most after that are in the 20,000-square-foot range, Frank said.

Until this recent transaction, office vacancies were seeing the quickest improvement in Schaumburg, Summers said.

Office building vacancies were at 23.9 percent in the second quarter of 2009 and at 19.3 percent in June 2010, she said.

From Bartlett's perspective, the move of JIT Packaging will be a loss to the business community, but an understandable one, Village President Michael E. Kelly said.

"Any business leaving the community certainly doesn't help," he said. "JIT, to their credit, was looking for a bigger place and we didn't have a place big enough."

Kelly said Bartlett is a very business-friendly community and he hopes it won't take long to fill the space JIT Packaging is leaving behind.

"We were very glad to have them," Kelly said. "I'm glad for the business that they're prosperous enough to need that size of building."