Amita Health to move headquarters, 1,100 jobs to Lisle

Written by: Alby Gullan | Published by: Crain’s Chicago Business

 

As Amita Health expands its reach under a big new merger, the health system plans to move its headquarters from Arlington Heights to Lisle.

 

Amita has reached a tentative agreement to lease 225,000 square feet in the Navistar campus in west suburban Lisle, where it would move about 1,100 employees from seven suburban locations, including Arlington Heights. If Amita finalizes a deal with the truck maker, it would be the biggest office lease in the Chicago suburbs in more than a year.

 

As it plots its headquarters move, Amita is poised for some other big changes due to another deal announced this week. Amita, a two-year-old joint venture between Ascension and Adventist Midwest Health, could more than double in size as result of Ascension’s planned acquisitionof Presence Health.

 

Amita’s move would represent a major triumph for Lisle, bringing more office workers to its restaurants and more business to its hotels.

 

“It’s going to bring a lot of people working in the community that are going to spend money in the community, so to me, it seems like a big win for the village,” Lisle trustee Anthony Carballo said during a discussion of the deal at an Aug. 21 village board meeting, according to a recorded video.

 

Navistar has shrunk so much that its corporate offices at Interstate 88 and Naperville Road are awash in space. The company employs about 1,800 people there now, down from 3,200 when it moved there in 2011.

 

In late 2015, Navistar hired Jones Lang LaSalle to find one or more tenants to lease half the space in the 1.2-million-square-foot campus. So far, JLL has found one: National Express, a transportation firm that signed a 54,000-square-foot lease in a building at 2601 Navistar Drive earlier this year.

 

A Navistar executive and JLL broker outlined the Amita deal in the Aug. 21 meeting because Navistar is seeking the village’s permission to expand a surface parking lot on its campus. Amita wants 5 parking spaces per every 1,000 square feet; Navistar currently can provide only 4.25, so it needs to add 176 spaces to accommodate Amita.

 

Navistar would add the spots by making them narrower and removing some landscaping. The company was asking the village for a quick response, because Amita wants some assurance that the city will sign off on the change by the end of the month, when it faces a key lease deadline on another property, JLL Managing Director John Musgjerd told the trustees.

 

Some trustees questioned Navistar’s request to fast-track the parking change, saying they were caught off-guard by it. But in the end, the board voted to direct village staff to draft a measure that would allow for expanded parking, to be taken up by the board at its Sept 11 meeting. That was enough to satisfy Musgjerd and presumably keep the deal alive.

 

Reached by phone, Musgjerd declined to comment, as did an Amita spokesman. A Navistar spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

 

Under a 10-year-lease with Navistar, Amita would move office employees to Lisle from Arlington Heights, Bolingbrook, Hoffman Estates, Elk Grove Village and other suburban locations. It would start moving there next March, ultimately occupying three buildings on the north end of the Navistar property, Musgjerd told the Lisle trustees.

 

“The only reason for this office is lease is their desire to get all their people under one roof,” Musgjerd said.

 

It’s unclear if the headquarters lease has anything to do with the pending Presence merger. Amita operates six acute-care hospitals and three specialty hospitals in the Chicago. The deal with Chicago-based Presence would bring 10 more hospitals under the Amita umbrella.

 

The deal with Navistar, meanwhile, is good news for landlords in the west suburban office market. Though the second-quarter vacancy rate for the far western suburbs, 19.8 percent, was below the overall suburban rate of 20.6 percent, according to JLL, the market has several big blocks of empty space.

 

Big vacancies include the entire former OfficeMax headquarters, a 354,000-square-foot building along I-88 in Naperville; ConAgra’s former offices, an 189,000-square-foot building in Naperville, and an empty 206,000-square-foot building just east of Navistar’s headquarters.

 

Luxury Amenities, Restaurant Planned for Marq on Main Apartment Complex in Downtown Lisle

Development in Downtown Lisle

Proximity to the Lisle commuter station is not the only attraction of Marq on Main, the mixed use residential community currently under development on the site what once was the Old Village Hall in Downtown Lisle. The project has a host of luxury amenities to offer residents seeking the vibrancy and convenience of downtown living coupled with the small-town ambience and natural surroundings of the “Arboretum Village.”

 

The mixed-use development includes 202  1- and 2-bedroom apartments in five stories on Burlington Avenue and three stories along Main Street, with indoor parking for residents and tenants, as well as 35 new on-street parking spaces. Some 15,000 square-feet of new commercial space will add restaurant and retail uses that will strengthen the commercial district, build foot traffic and enhance the downtown as an attractive dining destination. The development will feature a new public plaza offering outdoor dining at Main and Burlington, as well an additional public plaza at Spencer and Burlington, and two rooftop courtyards providing along Burlington Avenue. An upscale restaurant and craft beer tap room is planned.

 

“We are pleased to be adding to the vitality of Downtown Lisle,” says Marquette President and CEO Nick Ryan. “Mayor Broda and the Village have remained committed to economic development and this transit-oriented development is the type of development that has seen great success in surrounding communities. We expect to see the same energy and interest in downtown Lisle.”

 

Amenities residents can enjoy include a resort-style pool with cabanas and sun deck, as well as a pergola lounge, fire table and grilling stations. Indoors, residents will have access to a tech lounge and a chill lounge with coffee available 24-hours. An onsite health club is also planned. The development brings an investment of $45M to downtown Lisle, and is now leasing for an expected Fall 2017 opening.

 

Samtec to Open Design and Development Center in Lisle

Samtec announces the opening of an interconnect design and development center in the Chicago, IL suburb of Lisle. This office is a critical element of Samtec’s future product development and technology roadmap, and recruitment for staff at this new facility is rapidly underway.

 

Selected for its central location and impressive electromechanical local talent pool, the Chicagoland office will join that ranks of Samtec’s Silicon Valley Optics Design Center, Pacific Northwest High Speed Cable Plant, Microelectronics Group in Colorado Springs, Advanced Interconnect Design Groups located on three continents, and Signal Integrity Group and Teraspeed Consulting in the northeast US. Skillsets spanning all of these areas of expertise are being sought for the Chicagoland office, to build a truly cross-functional and integrated team. Together, these technology centers develop products and services that address full-system challenges and offer strategic support at every level. The Chicagoland office, which is looking to immediately staff Product Design Engineers, Manufacturing Engineers, Signal Integrity Engineers, and an Engineering Manager, will be central to this effort in more than the geographic sense.

 

About Samtec

 

Founded in 1976, Samtec is a privately held, $626 million global manufacturers of a broad line of electronic interconnect solution blocks, including IC-to-Board/Ultra Micro, High Speed Board-to-Board, High Speed Cables, Future-Proof/Active Optics, Flexible Stacking, and Micro/Rugged components and cables. To meet the interconnect challenges of tomorrow and beyond, Samtec has developed unique Technology Centers to help optimize the entire signal transmission path… from the IC to the panel and beyond, and all points in between.

Universal Technical Institute Opens New State of the Art Industry Campus

Lisle, Ill. (November 13, 2013) – Universal Technical Institute (NYSE: UTI), the nation’s leading provider of post-secondary education for individuals seeking careers as professional automotive, diesel, collision repair, motorcycle and marine technicians, has opened its new, state-of-the-industry, 187,000 square foot campus in Lisle. The new facility replaces its Glendale Heights campus, where it had operated for the past 25 years and produced more than 19,000 graduates. The Lisle facility is designed to accommodate approximately 2,000 students and up to 150 faculty and staff. Continue reading