CHICAGO—Orbus Exhibit and Display Group was started in Chicago in 2001 with three employees, but they just signed a 12-year lease for a build-to-suit warehouse facility which can eventually accommodate about 300 employees. Conor Commercial Real Estate will develop the 347,400-square-feet facility at their Union Pointe Business Park in south suburban Woodridge. Once they consolidate operations, now in Niles and Bolingbrook, Orbus will triple its footprint, and Conor officials say the new facility, which can be expanded by 82,000-square-feet, will be the largest build-to-suit in the Chicago metropolitan area in 2013.

“Orbus sees that as enough space for the twelve-year commitment they made and even beyond that, maybe to twenty years,” says Daniel E. Fogarty, vice president of Conor, a member of The McShane Companies. Brian Carroll and Jim Cummings of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented Conor in this transaction. Jack H. Rosenberg, principal, and Frederick L. Regnery, senior vice president, both with Colliers International Chicago's Industrial Advisory Group, represented Orbus.

“Orbus considered many different existing and build-to-suit options throughout the entire metropolitan Chicago area,” says Regnery. “Ultimately, the decision was made to construct a new facility within Union Pointe due to the percentage of Orbus employees working in the area and the need for an unusually high concentration of quality office space.”