The firm purchased the three-acre parcel within the 70-acre Huntington Woods Corporate Center for $2.2 million from McShane Development Co., which along with MetLife Real Estate Investments is building out the campus.

Mike Gazzola of Dixon Cos., along with Theresa Gleason, VP of Paine/Wetzel ONCOR International, represented Big Kaiser in its purchase of the land. "The quality of Huntington Woods became quite obvious to them," says Gazzola, EVP of Dixon, which is constructing Big Kaiser's new headquarters. "One of the key drivers to their purchasing land in this location was that they do a lot of business with Mori Seiki, which is doing a build-to-suit directly to the south of this site."

Mori Seiki Americas, a machine tool company, broke ground late last year on an $11-million, 102,000-square-foot headquarters, which will be completed this summer as the first building constructed by in the park. McShane bought Huntington Woods from AT&T last summer for about $23.2 million, with plans to develop the land into build to suits ranging in size from 50,000 to 200,000 square feet. The business park's location, at the intersection of West Central Road and Huntington Boulevard, also appealed to Big Kaiser based on its proximity to highways, including Interstate 90.

The new two-story office will house 35 employees and represents an almost tripling of the space the company currently occupies in Elk Grove Village. "Part of this expansion is for the future; it's not all for today," Gazzola tells GlobeSt.com. "Their current facility is very tight, and their new headquarters allows room for growth."

The new office is located in the northwestern Cook County suburbs, where occupancy rates are around 74%, according to a recent Cushman & Wakefield office market report. "These particular deals were set in motion more than a year and a half ago," Gazzola says. "Both companies have Japanese roots, and they continue to grow. But overall the build-to-suit market is very slow right now."