A real estate investment trust is demolishing vacant office buildings once leased to drugstore giant Walgreens Boots Alliance in Chicago’s northern suburbs and looking to sell the cleared land after an agreement to sell the sprawling site to a local developer fell through.
Orion Properties has hired CBRE brokers to sell 37.5 acres of land on Lake Cook Road in Deerfield, Illinois, according to a brochure.
That comes after CEO Paul McDowell earlier this month said on a call with analysts that demolition of buildings on the site is “well underway.” He said the move would “allow us to lower carrying costs materially and make the property more attractive to potential investors while we continue to evaluate our alternatives for this property,” according to a transcript of the call.
The buildings at 1411, 1415, 1417, 1419, 1425 and 1435 Lake Cook Road were part of Walgreens’ headquarters campus until the company in recent years began scaling back its presence. Walgreens’ rent payments ended in August 2023, according to Deerfield documents.
Late last year, Walgreens also previously sold a portion of the campus that it still owned on Wilmot Road to homebuilder PulteGroup, which plans 42 single-family homes on that 18-acre site.
In 2023, Chicago-based LG Development Group struck a preliminary deal to buy the six buildings with plans to knock them down and create an entertainment district. Deerfield’s village board voted to approve uses such as live entertainment, restaurants, bars, golf driving ranges, breweries, skating rinks, bowling alleys and movie theaters for the site.
It’s not clear why the deal with LG was never completed.
In an email to CoStar News, Daniel Haughney, LG Development chief investment officer, confirmed the firm is no longer under contract to buy the site and no longer involved in the project. He declined to elaborate.
Phoenix-based Orion did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The change in direction, previously reported by Crain’s Chicago Business, will create a “blank canvas” for redevelopment, according to the CBRE materials.
The brokers are pitching the site, which it says will be cleared by October, as an option for some combination of residential, retail, entertainment, medical office, senior housing, data center or car dealership projects.
For the record
The seller is represented by CBRE brokers Tom Svoboda, Matt Ishikawa and Tony Gange.