CHICAGO—Kenall Manufacturing, a commercial lighting company, will relocate its headquarters and factory from north suburban Gurnee to a facility they plan to develop just over the Wisconsin border in Kenosha. The move will allow the company to expand from their current 120,000-square-foot building to a 354,000-square-foot facility in the Business Park of Kenosha.
The cross border shift raises fears in Illinois that more companies will make similar decisions and undermine the metro area's job market. Kenall's top priority was to preserve their present labor force, which limited their search to northeastern Illinois and southeastern Wisconsin, according to Bill Hartwig, the firm's executive vice president, finance and administration.
“We started with 25 to 30 feasible locations, both existing space and development sites, during a rigorous site search that spanned over the course of a year,” says Thomas Boyle from Newmark Knight Frank Epic, who, along with Newmark Grubb Knight Frank Global Corporate Services, worked with Kenall officials on the move. "The process executed with Kenall produced the absolute best outcome available in the market.”
Boyle, with NKFE Senior Associate Jared Paff, teamed with NGKF GCS' Robert Hess, Bradley Migdal and Michael McDermott in the search.
The NGKF team and Kenall officials sought and obtained state and local incentives, and say without them the move would not have happened. The details of the tax-increment financing agreement with Kenosha have not been finalized, but once that gets done, the project will then go through final permitting, with construction expected to begin in the following months.
"Propelling Kenosha to the top of Kenall's list was Business Park of Kenosha's proximity to Gateway Technical College, an important source of skilled labor and customized training for the company,” says Hess.
“NGKF provided Kenall with demographic analyses of communities around its potential headquarters sites, and also looked at quality of labor, logistics, proximity to suppliers and other key factors. It was extremely important for the new headquarters to be cost-efficient and serve Kenall's needs for future growth,” states Migdal. “Wisconsin's healthy state budget was yet another plus."
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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.
