Celebrating more than 15 years of the Downers Grove Economic Development Corporation, we look back at the values that built Downers Grove and continue to define it today. 

It all started with the ox.

In 1835, three years after the area’s first settler arrived in what would become Downers Grove, Pierce Downer set out to build a trail. He wasn’t alone. Since arriving, he had been joined by Israel Blodgett and Samuel Curtiss, a pair of settlers who purchased nearby land – at a cool $1.25/acre – where they established a farm and a blacksmith shop.

That morning, the men gathered in the forest to lead a team of oxen. The animals were strapped to a giant log. As they pulled it forward, the log slowly transformed the trail, flattening and widening it. By the time their work was finished, the homesteaders had built a new trail linking their properties to another path: a main thoroughfare that ran from Naper Settlement (Naperville) all the way to Chicago. Things would never be the same.

At the time, it may not have looked like much – a handful of men and oxen dragging a log through the forest – but by building this trail, the settlers connected their tiny village to the rest of the region, laying the groundwork for more people and businesses to move to the community. It was a strategic move.

It was also the area’s very first collaborative economic-development project—though far from the last.

“Collaboration and strategic planning are at the heart of good economic development,” says Michael Cassa, President and CEO of the Downers Grove Economic Development Corporation (DGEDC). The organization, a public-private collaboration that spearheads efforts to attract and retain businesses in Downers Grove, celebrated its 15^th year in 2021. 

“The most sustainable and meaningful growth occurs when you have everyone – from both the private and public sectors – moving in the same direction, working to realize a collective vision. We help establish that vision and guide the community towards it.”

The DGEDC is the culmination of a long history of collaboration and strategic planning in Downers Grove. Years after Pierce and his fellow settlers built their new trail, the people of Downers Grove would once again work together – along with leaders of surrounding communities – to lobby the Burlington Railroad Company to build a railroad from Chicago to Aurora. Opened in 1864, the railroad spurred further population growth, as well as the area’s first industrial operations.

In the decades that followed, the public and private leaders of Downers Grove continued to lobby on behalf of their community and guide the area through times of transition.

In the mid-twentieth century, a pair of major tollways were constructed along the village’s northern and western boundaries: a highway in 1958 that would later become I-88, along with I-355 in 1989.

Much like the railroad, these tollways caused major economic expansion in the community. But it was the strategic planning of local business leaders and public officials that made this growth smart, sustainable, and beneficial to the various stakeholders of Downers Grove—residents, visitors, workers and businesses alike.

Then, in 2006, a group of community leaders founded the Downers Grove Economic Development Corporation. A spiritual successor to the many collaborations that transformed Downers Grove from a sleepy village to the diverse and thriving economy it is today, the DGEDC brought together public and private leaders to work collaboratively and strategically.

It couldn’t have come at a better time. In the 2000s, market trends were shifting, e-commerce was rising, and the global economy was entering a new age of volatility. It was time to work together and think strategically. 

Today, one of the DGEDC’s biggest responsibilities is guiding Downers Grove through the economic changes occurring both within and beyond its borders.

Nowhere is there a faster and more dramatic transformation than in the retail market.

Driven by shifting consumer trends and the rise of e-commerce, retailers are hungry for strategic locations for their distribution centers and warehouses. They need locations that are close to their customers, close to a good workforce, and close to a solid transportation network.

Downers Grove hits all three marks. The community is located within a 30-minute drive (or a quick train ride) of 1.4 million qualified workers. Thanks to the two major tollways that border Downers Grove, goods can be quickly and efficiently shipped to customers anywhere in the Chicago region or beyond.

Much like the groups that lobbied for the railroad in the 19^th century and capitalized on the new highways of the 20^th, the DGEDC works to identify opportunities for businesses to build or expand in Downers Grove, then promotes the community’s advantages to target companies. They also work with the Village of Downers Grove to attract these businesses through incentive programs and infrastructure investments. Meanwhile, the group coordinates the many active projects within Downers Grove to ensure that each one fits into the big picture—the community’s vision for the future.  

The impact of DGEDC’s work is three-fold:

First, you have stories like Bridge Point Downers Grove. The development, which now features three buildings with more than 100 docks and nearly 700 parking spaces, is now home to two Amazon warehouses, as well as a Cooper’s Hawk Winery distribution center.

Today, the location seems like an obvious fit for distribution. It’s just over a mile from I-355 and three miles from I-88. That means distributors can quickly and efficiently get their products to customers, and e-commerce retailers can deliver time-sensitive services like one-day shipping.

“When we began seeing these new trends in industrial real estate and e-commerce, we realized that Downers Grove was in the perfect location,” says Nick Siegel, a Partner at Bridge Industrial, which developed Bridge Point Downers Grove as a joint venture with Banner Oak Capital Partners.

“Here, our tenants have the transportation network, the workforce, the diverse economy, and a community they really love.”

And yet, only a few years ago, the site was a vacant, 74-acre plot with a functionally useless facility. It was only through the collaboration of public and private leaders that the site was identified as a prime location for e-commerce retailers and others, then marketed to developers and potential tenants. DGEDC and the Village saw the site’s potential, they saw how it fit into the big picture, and they worked together to bring it to life.

Bridge Point’s story mirrors other e-commerce-related developments happening in Downers Grove, many of them impacted by the collaborative work of the DGEDC and the Village of Downers Grove. In addition to Bridge Point, Downers Grove has welcomed a number of new distribution centers – ranging from 24,000 to 170,000 square-feet – for businesses like Bridge Industrial, Remedi Senior Care, Thyssen Krupp and Green Bay Packaging, among others. Behind each of these developments, there’s a story of collaboration.

But the story of Downers Grove and the DGEDC is bigger than any one industry—even one as impactful as online retail.

Historically, the community has been defined by a large, diverse group of small and mid-sized businesses. (That includes brick and mortar retail, which, although evolving, continues to account for more than 80% of all U.S. retail sales.) Since the development of the tollways that border Downers Grove, the community has welcomed a number of corporate headquarters and regional offices, from Rexnord Corporation, which recently completed their new 248,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and Aerospace Division Headquarters in Ellsworth Business Park, to Flavorchem, which just opened a 25,000-square-foot innovation center at Oak Grove Commons Business Park.

While newer markets are key to the area’s growth, it’s the legacy industries and businesses that form the basis of its diversity and resiliency. A central part of the DGEDC’s mission is to support these businesses by lobbying on their behalf, marketing them to visitors, helping coordinate expansion and new investment, and promoting business-friendly policies, such as the community’s historically low commercial taxes.

Finally, there’s downtown Downers Grove—an area that’s critical to the community’s appeal to residents, visitors and businesses. Over the last few decades, the Village and the DGEDC have spurred investment in the area through promotion and innovative programs. In 1997, the Village established a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district in the downtown area. (A TIF allows a government to invest in public infrastructure and other improvements up front, then pay for them later with tax revenue generated by the project.) The program resulted in $48M in public improvements and, over the same period, $161M in private investment.

As the Village and the DGEDC led efforts to promote the downtown’s revitalization, the area saw a wave of new multi-family residential developments—including Opus Development, a new apartment complex that will soon break ground in downtown Downers Grove. Meanwhile, a mix of new restaurants and shops have sprung up: Bar Chido, Cadence Kitchen, The Foxtail, Gia Mia, Pierce Tavern and Wasabi, to name a few. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the DGEDC played a critical role in supporting businesses like these and connecting them to key resources. 

As you can see, much of the work of the DGEDC is about the future: the future of the community’s businesses, its historic downtown, its visitors and residents, and its position in the world of e-commerce.

At the same time, the values that guide the community today are the very same ones that drove its first settlers to build that trail all those years ago.

“Of course no one knows exactly what the future will bring,” says Cassa. “But I can tell you that we will build our best future so long as we continue to work together and think strategically.

“In Downers Grove, that’s what we’ve always been about.”

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About the Downers Grove Economic Development Corporation 

Since 2006, the Downers Grove Economic Development Corporation has spearheaded efforts in the village to attract new businesses and developers, while retaining legacy businesses and expanding promising developments. As the community continues to grow and transform, the DGEDC board orchestrates public-private collaboration, helps businesses navigate change, promotes business-friendly policies, and coordinates the smart, sustainable growth of the diverse Downers Grove economy.

Learn more about the organization here.

For Wood Dale, the stakes were high when searching for tenants to occupy a new 342,000-square-foot development along Wood Dale Road.

Historically, logistics had been the area’s dominant sector. However, in 2018, the City of Wood Dale published its Comprehensive Plan; among other things, the plan outlined a vision to diversify the local economy, putting a greater emphasis on manufacturing and corporate usage. By focusing on a wider variety of sectors, the City aimed to bring a wider variety of benefits to the community: more jobs, more aesthetically attractive buildings, and more travel within Wood Dale, which would increase spending at local businesses and generate greater sales-tax revenue.

The new development, Bridge Point Wood Dale, was an opportunity for the City to put their plan into action. But there were some bumps along the way. Before it was redeveloped, the land had previously been a low-rise office site – it was vacant for nearly eight years – and, as anyone in real estate knows, developing an industrial property for commercial offices is anything but easy. (It’s less like a makeover, more like plastic surgery.) While many brokers were insisting it should be developed as a logistics location, the City of Wood Dale pushed for a commercial-industrial space. Eventually, they found a developer (Bridge) to bring this vision to life.

Today, Bridge Point Wood Dale consists of two commercial-industrial buildings, both in a highly visible location along a heavily traveled road, at a slightly higher elevation (by Illinois standards) than the surrounding area. When you’re driving through Wood Dale, you’re almost guaranteed to see them. Therefore, whatever tenants occupied these buildings would come to represent the community’s character and set a precedent for the future.

“Wood Dale Road is our front door,” said Ed Cage, the Community Development Director at the City of Wood Dale. “It tells everybody what we are about, as a community.”

After several years of tough decisions, creative thinking and many, many meetings, two tenants moved into Bridge Point: Forward Space and nVenia (in 2020 and 2021, respectively). The new tenants bring a mix of corporate and manufacturing usage to Wood Dale—exactly what the City wanted.

“We aimed really high, and we got what we were looking for,” said Cage. “Actually, we got even more.”

Of course, getting a good tenant into a community is almost never easy. But Wood Dale faced a particularly puzzling series of challenges as they looked to fill this space.

The Jigsaw Puzzle

Historically, what has made Wood Dale so attractive to logistics companies—and now a blend of manufacturing and corporate users—is its strategic location.

Wood Dale sits just minutes west of O’Hare International Airport, next to Bensenville, along the I-390 corridor. I-290, I-355, Illinois Route 83 and other major highways are all nearby. This gives logistics companies (like Amazon, which has a Wood Dale facility) convenient access to multiple modes of transportation, allowing them to move goods quickly and efficiently to and from Midwest markets, and around the world.

Also, Wood Dale is in DuPage County, which has low property taxes. Cage said this is a major selling point for businesses that are considering the region.

“The number of people I’ve talked to who want to be in DuPage is huge,” he said. “As Community Development Director, that makes my job easier, because it gets people in the door.”

One of those companies is Nippon Express, a Japanese-owned logistics consulting business that integrates various modes of transportation into a one-stop solution.

For decades, Nippon was a tenant of two buildings in the northern quadrant of Wood Dale—an area that’s home to many of the community’s larger businesses—just south of Illinois Route 390.

As part of a strategy to synergize their Midwest operations, Nippon planned to grow their local presence—this included adding a corporate headquarters and relocating some 100 employees from their New York office to Wood Dale. However, the two buildings they currently occupied, which had been built in the 1980s, were out-of-date; they also didn’t offer the space that the company needed for the proposed expansion.

Nippon needed a new location. Initially, they turned to Bridge Point, the new development along Wood Dale Road.

This created an interesting dilemma for the City. Nippon had been part of the community for decades, and, as a Fortune 500 business, they brought a large amount of money and jobs to the area. Obviously, the City wanted to retain them.

However, in order to relocate and expand their facility as planned, Nippon would have needed all of Bridge Point, and the City was already closing in on an agreement with another company, Forward Space, that wanted one of Bridge Point’s two buildings.

This dilemma—in which the goals of attracting new businesses and retaining existing ones sometimes appear to be at odds—represents one of Wood Dale’s greatest challenges:

Space.

Wood Dale is a “built-out” community, meaning that much of its land has been developed. Unlike some cities further away from Chicago, it doesn’t have acres of open land. This sometimes makes it tougher to evolve the community and accomplish certain goals, like those outlined in the Comprehensive Plan. They aren’t working with a blank canvas.

Instead, Cage prefers to see it as a puzzle.

“We have all these pieces of the jigsaw,” he said. “If you want to bring a new business into the community, you have to rearrange things, and you have to be careful about it.”

In order to solve the puzzle of Nippon (a business they wanted to retain) and Forward Space (a business they wanted to attract), the City found a creative solution. First, Cage and others worked to bring Nippon’s attention toward a 20-acre space along Route 83, a location that checked every box on the company’s wish list: It was close to a major highway; it offered the space they needed; and it allowed them the freedom to build their facility to their specifications.

At the time, the area was unincorporated and occupied by residential properties; so, the City partnered with a developer that bought-out the residential properties, annexed the space and even rebuilt a section of Bryn Mawr Avenue that led to the future Nippon Express location. (The road had to be updated to meet the standards of a corporate park.) The developer then built a 300,000-square-foot facility in the newly annexed space, which became Nippon’s new U.S. Corporate Headquarters and warehouse in February 2021.

With this solution, the City accomplished both of its goals: They retained an established Fortune 500 company while bringing in a new business (actually, two new businesses) with diverse usages.  

In Q4 of 2020, the smaller of the two Bridge Point buildings (100,378 square-feet; 650 N Wood Dale Rd) was leased to Forward Space, a commercial furniture dealer that also provides workplace planning and related services. The new Forward Space facility combined a corporate headquarters and a warehouse—right in line with Wood Dale’s diversification goal.

And then, in the spring of 2021, another business moved into the second, larger Bridge Point building (241,888 square-feet; 750 N Wood Dale Rd). nVenia, a new company formed by the consolidation of several Duravant entities, is a packaging equipment manufacturer and solutions provider. Their new manufacturing facility brings more than 200 jobs to the community, accomplishing additional goals of Wood Dale’s Comprehensive Plan: to bring in more workers and generate more spending at local businesses and greater sales-tax revenue.

The final piece of this economic-development puzzle is the pair of buildings that Nippon left behind along Route 390. Recently, a developer submitted a proposal to remodel both buildings, which will give the City an opportunity to attract more business.

“This is a good example of developing a built-out community in a smart way,” said Cage. “You move an existing business to another place within the community, where they can grow. Then, you develop the old site and use that space to bring in new tenants.”

With the right planning—and perhaps some serendipity—all the pieces fit into place.

A “Front-Page” Community

Logistics has been and will continue to be a major part of the Wood Dale economy. But now, as they retain and attract a wider variety of businesses, the City wants you to see their community as a prime location for corporate and manufacturing users, among others.

In addition to working the “jigsaw puzzle” that makes this evolution possible, the community is being proactive. Recently, Cage noted that the City’s restrictions on building height—buildings in Wood Dale couldn’t be taller than 37 feet, unless the developer had a variance—was limiting developers that wanted to create buildings that would attract the very kind of tenants the City wanted.

During a meeting, Cage asked the City Council to vote to raise the maximum height from 37 to 42 feet. They raised it to 45.

“That sent a message,” he said.

Over the last several years, Cage and other City officials have worked to establish closer relationships with real-estate brokers and developers, helping them understand the kind of users that Wood Dale is looking to attract. Cage said these relationships—along with the City’s proactive stance and stories of businesses like Nippon, Forward Space and nVenia—are making Wood Dale a top choice.

“Years ago, I wouldn’t say that Wood Dale was always on the front page of everyone’s list, so to speak. Now, we’ve moved up.

“It’s a combination of being in DuPage County, our City being welcome to new businesses and developments, and everyone understanding the goals of our Comprehensive Plan.

“I’d say we’re now on the front page—top of the list.”

Wood Dale is a community in DuPage County, Illinois. Just west of Chicago, DuPage offers a strategic location at the heart of an international cargo gateway, as well as a collaborative environment between the public and private sector, a culturally diverse community, beautiful parks and trails, excellent schools and responsible local governance. Learn more about DuPage’s business climate here.