Nick's Chicago Commercial Real Estate

Motorola Mobility Plans to Keep HQ in Libertyville, Illinois

Motorola Mobility and the State of Illinois reached agreement on a $100 million incentive package to keep the company in Illinois. For more information on the agreement check out the following link: More Info . The next test for Gov. Quinn will to keep Sears in Illinois, which will surely result in another dip into the State's coffers.

IMAGETEC L.P. Leases Space in One Overlook Point

 

IMAGETEC L.P., one of the nation’s largest office equipment dealers, has opened their fifth Chicago area branch location in 5,158 sq. ft. in One Overlook Point, in the Lincolnshire Corporate Center.  This office is IMAGETEC’s Core Print Solutions division.  IMAGETEC is a supplier of document management equipment and solutions manufactured by Ricoh, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Konica Minolta, Lexmark and Kodak.  The building’s owner was represented by Nicholas Panarese of Van Vlissingen and Co.

Growing Importance of Milwaukee Avenue Amenities in Location Preferences

 

In today’s competitive commercial office leasing markets, the availability of amenities is becoming the deciding factor in many corporate re-location decisions. More and more, for corporations looking at North Suburban Chicago sites, Milwaukee Avenue is becoming the preferred office location as a result of its outstanding mix of amenities and superior labor pool access. While some space users not as familiar with the area initially gravitate toward locations adjacent to the Tri-State Tollway, once they better understand the market they focus on the Class A buildings from Lake Cook Road to Illinois Route 60, which make up the Milwaukee Avenue Office Corridor. Located near both the Tollway and Metra Stations, these properties offer immediate proximity to over a hundred restaurants, more than a dozen hotels, vibrant shopping, full service health clubs, night life, golf courses and day care centers.  Also, the Milwaukee Avenue locations offer superior access to the Western / Central Lake and McHenry County labor pool to the west while maintaining convenient 4 lane access for the executives living in the lakefront communities to the east.  Foremost amongst these developments are Van Vlissingen and Co.’s the Lincolnshire Corporate Center and The Corporate Woods which offer close to 6 million square feet of space on their large, amenity rich, corporate campuses.

BioSante Continues to Expand in Lincolnshire Corporate Center

BioSante Pharmaceuticals expands into over 20,000 sq. ft. of office space at 111 Barclay Boulevard in Lincolnshire Corporate Center. BioSante is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on developing products for female sexual health and oncology. BioSante's lead products include LibiGel® (transdermal testosterone gel) for the treatment of female sexual dysfunction (FSD) which is in Phase III clinical development under a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Special Protocol Assessment. BioSante is also developing a portfolio of cancer vaccines, four of which have been granted Orphan Drug designation, which are currently in several Phase II clinical trials. The Lincolnshire Corporate Center features numerous "city amenities" on its campus including restaurants, public transportation, hotels, shopping and a day care center. Nicholas Panarese of Van Vlissingen and Co. represented the landlord in the transaction.

Not All Lake County Real Estate Tax Rates are Created Equal

Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate searches are often focused on Lake County due to the ease of access to O’Hare, Chicago and Milwaukee.  The attraction to Lake County is further enhanced with the strength of the labor pool, high standard of life, abundant amenities and strong business base of existing companies.  Due to the high quality of life and some of the top school systems in the country, Lake County is also a magnet to attracting top executives to reside within the county further enhancing the need for commercial property with these decision makers seeking workplaces closer to home (see Article  "Scientific Plant Location" ).

Lake County commercial properties are commonly advertised with “Lower Lake County Taxes” which as a whole are true being roughly half of what they would be in Cook County absent of tax incentives such as a 6B.  We’ll get into the details of Cook versus collar county taxes in a future article as the issue of this article is to breakdown the tax rates within Lake County and to dispel the misconception that all Lake County commercial property taxes are created equal. 

What needs to be understood is that the premier school systems noted above come with a cost and how each community is balanced between density of housing and the balance (or lack thereof) between residential and commercial real estate dictates their tax rate given the fact that schools make up about two-thirds of a tax bill.  Lincolnshire for example does not have dense housing, and a tremendous commercial base including the Lincolnshire Corporate Center, the Lincolnshire Commons, the Marriott Lincolnshire Resort, and multiple office and industrial projects.  All these commercial projects feed the school system’s tax base without sending a single child to school.  Strong examples such as this allows for the tax rate to actually decrease over time. 

On the flipside, communities with dense housing tax the school systems (no pun intended).  These bedroom communities will attract the retail and service users to serve the rooftops but are challenged to bring enough office and industrial product to counter balance the abundant school dollars needed.

As demonstrated on the attached, it appears the further north one goes in Lake County, the higher the tax rate goes with a few exceptions.  The tax rate comparison schedule provides a sampling of tax rates throughout the county while also putting the difference to dollars both short and long term.  Commercial users and investors need to be aware that there are not only differences in the county, but differences are also frequently found within the same village.  The best example of this is comparing the Corporate Woods and the Continental Executive Parke both of Vernon Hills.  The Continental Executive Parke is 18% higher than the Corporate Woods.  The Corporate Woods is part of the Stevenson school district while the Continental Executive Parke is part of the newer Vernon Hills High School.  Maybe not a great deal on the surface, but the first year savings on a five million dollar assessment would be $18,283.  Based on the assumptions shown on the attached schedule, this difference compounds over time to the point of a $394,528 savings over a fifteen-year period.  Not All Lake County Real Estate Tax Rates are Created Equal!

Download LakeCountyTaxRateTable.pdf

Written by:  David S. LeCavalier, CCIM

Vice President, Van Vlissingen and Co.

The above information is subject to verification and no liability for errors or omissions is assumed.  Actual future assessed valuations, multipliers, and tax rates may vary significantly from projections assumed. 

 

What If "Cap Rates" Increase?

The current high values of income producing commercial real estate are predicated on historically low income capitalization rates. The following article examines what might happen if we see a shift of  "cap rates" back to historic levels:  The Mixed Blessing of Low "Cap Rates"