DePaul Puts Satellite in O'Hare Office Park

A new casino will be built at DePaul's Des Plaines location, forcing the move. Chad Freese with CB Richard Ellis represented the college in the long term lease, which consists of most of the first three floors of the West building at Triangle Plaza. Freese tells GlobeSt.com that he was able to negotiate prominent signage for a tenant that's only taking 6% of the 630,000-square-foot complex. "They are going to have a large sign on the building, and on a new monument at the entrance," Freese says.

Main tenants of the buildings include Wilson, which has more than 100,000 square feet, and Rexam PLC, which has close to 80,000 square feet. Freese did not divulge the DePaul lease rate, but says it's much lower than the complex asking rate of $14-$16 per square foot. "Most of the leases are higher because the deals were done before the market crash," he says.

The East building, which includes Wilson, is 96% leased, and the West building is now 69% leased, Freese says. The rest of the O'Hare office market is soft, about 23% vacant, with a lot of big block space available, he says. One new challenge for tenants looking for space is doing due diligence on a landlord, Freese says. "If a building is upside-down, you can be certain that the owner isn't going to be spending money on improvements," Freese says. The Triangle complex is owned by a John Buck Co. partnership, and is more trustworthy than some other nearby buildings that are now in receivership. "Before, tenants never paid much regard to who an owner or the owner-investors were. Now it's a paramount issue for sophisticated tenants to understand," Freese says.