CHICAGO- Following up on a Friday story, GlobeSt.com spoke to Jones Lang LaSalle Managing Director Trevor Ragsdale about how the firm would market Venture One Real Estate's Rockford-area business parks.
“The I-39 corridor is a corridor that exports a huge volume of agricultural and food products,” much of which go out via the nearby Union Pacific Global III Intermodal Facility, and companies in those lines would find the Rock 39 Industrial Park and Loves Park Corporate Center a good fit, he says.
Furthermore, “there's this pool of labor there that has very high skills” since the Rockford region has a great deal of intellectual capital in manufacturing, especially in aerospace. “There's an opportunity to provide all of this to companies that need to modernize their manufacturing operations or for foreign companies that want to set up a U.S. headquarters and really tap into a global market. That's the bedrock of our marketing strategy.”
“It's outside the core of what would be viewed as the Chicago metropolitan area,” he admits. But “a lot of times when a developer goes out and takes on a pioneering location” they can also cut deals with the local governments. For example, in this case, Rockford and Winnebago County have agreed to provide the parks tax incentives like a tax-increment-financing district and needed infrastructure like municipal water service.
“There's truly a very beneficial collaborative relationship that's built around a common goal to attract businesses and jobs,” Ragsdale says. Running a business in Winnebago County is “less expensive than doing business in other parts of the market that are more mature. The key is you've got a well-capitalized developer working with a pro-business county.”
The original story appears below:
CHICAGO- Jones Lang LaSalle announced earlier this week that the firm had been selected by the developer Venture One Real Estate to exclusively market two of their industrial parks in the Rockford area along the I-39 corridor. Rock 39 Industrial Park and Loves Park Corporate Center have a combined 340 acres and shovel-ready sites for build-to-suit facilities of up to 1.5-million-square-feet. Current tenants include PepsiCo, Con-way and Danfoss.
“The combination of a sustainable skilled labor force, low occupancy costs, and access to the upper Midwest population centers positions both of these parks to compete on a total-landed-cost-basis with any other park in the Chicago area,” says Jones Lang LaSalle Managing Director Trevor Ragsdale. He will market the properties along with colleagues Steve Trapp, Kelly Gray and Michael Conner.
“These properties are development ready,” says Eric Voyles, the vice president of national business development for the Rockford Area Economic Development Council, and can offer smoother transportation options than the more congested markets to the east. “A truck pushing away from a trucking dock out here can hit the highway and be at full-speed in five or six minutes,” he adds. Yesterday, GlobeSt.com reported that Voyles had also accepted the position of executive director of the I-39 Logistics Corridor Association.
In addition, both parks have quick access to the UPS Air Hub at the Greater Rockford Airport. Furthermore, just south along I-39 sits the town of Rochelle, which has two major rail lines and the Union Pacific Global III Intermodal Facility.
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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.
