CHICAGO—Verizon Wireless has just agreed to move its Elgin, IL-based Care Center to the recently renovated Continental Towers at 1701 Golf Rd. in suburban Rolling Meadows. By doing so, it will push the occupancy rate up past 90%, a far cry from where things stood in 2013 when GlenStar Properties and Walton Street Capital LLC bought the 911,341 square foot project. After the loss of its anchor tenant and after several years with an under-capitalized owner, occupancy had sunk to less than 50%. But the new landlords seem to have won their bet that the property would recover if it was properly developed.
“We just had excellent activity across the board from the beginning and are well ahead of schedule for this project,” Dave Trumpy of GlenStar tells GlobeSt.com. And he urges those who think the suburban office market is dead to take another look.
“There has been a ton of positive net absorption in the northwest suburban market in the last 24 months,” he says. “Every time a suburban company moves downtown it makes the papers, but it's not considered news when a company decides to renew or even expand a suburban lease.”
Verizon currently occupies 125,000 square feet at 777 Big Timber Rd. in Elgin, but next May it will take over 159,800 square feet at Continental Towers. “They wanted to upgrade the office environment for their employees,” Trumpy adds, since the Elgin space was a single-user building with no real amenities. Furthermore, “they wanted to stay in the northwest market near where their people lived.”
Shortly after acquiring Continental Towers, GlenStar launched a two-phase, $15 million renovation effort for the three-tower complex. It now includes a state-of-the art on-site cafeteria, a health and wellness center and more conference space. In addition, GlenStar updated the lobbies, renovated tenant corridors and washrooms as well as upgraded its elevators.
In the recently-launched second phase, the company will construct a new main entrance with decorative lighting, ornamental canopied entry ways to each of the buildings with covered pick-up/drop-off areas, incorporate additional landscaping features and construct a new four-story parking garage, among other updates.
Verizon employs 900 at its Elgin Care Center which includes customer service, IT and human resources. In addition, the center is also home to Verizon's only national online social support team.
“The move and larger space will also allow us to accommodate up to 200 new full-time jobs,” says Brian Pascoe, region president for Verizon. “The added resources will help ensure we continue to provide the best customer experience in the industry.”
“For several years this was a zombie property,” says Trumpy. “But we knew it always performed well when its owner was well-capitalized. Since May 2013, the property has had the capital to compete and the result has been fantastic.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
