Plexus Corp. Signs $20-Mil Lease With Millbrook Properties

CHICAGO-Electronics manufacturer Plexus Corp. has entered into a land and build-to-suit lease deal worth over $20 million with Millbrook Properties LLC, according to brokerage executives who represented Millbrook in the transaction.

“We signed the deal Friday,” says Mike Flynn, managing director of NAI Hiffman’s Office Brokerage Group. “Millbrook Properties will be leasing a 110,000-sf manufacturing facility to Plexus. Millbrook will also be developing the project as well as leasing the land to Plexus.” Flynn would not reveal the projected costs of the manufacturing facility development.

Millbrook Properties is a closely held developer owned by Arnold, Jack and Harvey Miller, brothers who founded the Quill Corp., a distributor of office products the brothers recently sold to Staples. The Millers purchased the 90-acres on which Millbrook Business Center sits in 1979 and built Quill’s headquarters as the first buildings in the park.

The park, which is in southern Lake County near Milwaukee Road and Route 22, has been the scene of busy development activity of late. Flynn says negotiations for a build-to-suit lease for the last five acres in the park are underway and, if that fails, Millbrook plans to break ground on an 80,000-sf speculative office facility next year. Zenith Electronics Corp. just last week leased an entire 50,000-sf building nearing completion at the Millbrook Business Park.

The park will have 10 buildings when the structure on the last five acres is complete, capping over 20 years of development by Millbrook Properties at the site.