CHICAGO—Zurich Insurance Co. has been the primary occupant of the Zurich Towers since the suburban Schaumburg office property was built in 1986, but next year Zurich will vacant the two buildings in favor of its new build-to-suit headquarters on a portion of the nearby Motorola Solutions campus. The move will leave a big hole in the submarket, but Retail Properties of America, Inc. has just hired Colliers International, a company with experience in repositioning massive complexes, to market and lease the two-building, 895,400-square-foot office property. David W. Florent, Steven W. Kling and Francis R. Prock, all principals with Colliers' Chicago-based office advisory group, will lead the effort.
“Colliers International has a solid track record of rebranding single tenant centers throughout Illinois and we are excited to be working with them on this incredible repositioning project,” said Gerald Wright, senior vice president and director of asset management for the Oak Brook, IL-based RPAI. “We believe that this property represents one of the best large block office locations in the Chicago suburban market and we are eager to unveil our vision for the space in collaboration with the Colliers team.”
Colliers was hired to market the four-building, 1.1-million-square-foot Kemper Lakes Business Center in suburban Long Grove after Kemper Insurance left for a new downtown headquarters. Kling led a team that over a six-year period transformed the campus from a ghost town to a thriving multi-tenant property. Fresenius Kabi USA LLC, for example, signed a long-term lease for 262,291-square-feet, and Acco Brands Corp., in another long-term lease, signed for 189,371-square-feet. Kling told GlobeSt.com that the Colliers team took the complex from 27% occupied to 93% occupied.
In addition, Florent, Kling, and Prock refilled Tallgrass Corporate Center, a 548,100-square-foot property in suburban Bolingbrook, after Tellabs vacated it in 2004. “It took about 36 months to get it done,” Kling said. The team completed six leases totaling nearly 440,000-square-feet of space and brought the facility to 90% occupied.
“We are flattered and so excited to have been selected as RPAI's partner for this tremendous endeavor,” said David R. Kahnweiler, chairman and chief executive officer of Colliers | Chicago. “We are extremely confident in our leasing team's long history of successful, large scale property repositioning and will certainly expend all resources necessary to support the marketing efforts.”
According to Colliers International's year-end 2014 suburban Chicago office market report, the Northwest submarket has continued to improve throughout 2014 and hit a six-year vacancy rate low of 20.8%, down from 22.7% just one year ago.
“With a declining vacancy rate – especially in the class A sector – and two consecutive years of positive absorption, the Northwest market is making a comeback,” said Kling. “We intend to capitalize on that momentum and hit the ground running to make RPAI's vision a reality.”
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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.
