One year after its acquisition by Chicago-based American Landmark Properties, the Illinois Science + Technology Park (ISTP) is fully leased following two lease extensions and expansions by long-time tenants Vetter Pharma International USA and Charles River Laboratories International as well as a new lease with Northwestern University. The research park was 86% leased when acquired in 2017.
Located in Skokie, IL, the ISTP is a 24-acre contemporary research, lab and office campus designed to accommodate demand from life science and technology users at various stages of the business life cycle—from startup to Fortune 500 company. The state-of-art research campus offers flexible, Class A office and laboratory space including suites, dedicated laboratory and office space and R&D build-to-suit sites. The community/research environment facilitates collaboration and networking among innovation-driven enterprises. In addition to the fully leased three laboratory and office buildings, additional space is available immediately for re-development of an existing, three-story building shell at 8030 Lamon Avenue.
“We are pleased with our phase one leasing progress involving three existing buildings and are now focused on phase two development opportunities,” said John Roeser, American Landmark Properties executive vice president. “We have engaged Cannon Design to kick off the redevelopment of 8030 Lamon Avenue, a three-story office/research space. This 130,000-square-foot facility is an ideal, customized redevelopment project for the right tenant.”
Five additional sites provide 1.3 million square feet of potential build-to-suit development. Scott Brandwein and David Saad of CBRE are the leasing agents for the ISTP property.
“The ability to provide significantly more space is very important to our profile tenants who want expansion space potential as relocating these types of facilities is very expensive and disruptive to their research activities,” said Roeser.
Vetter Pharma—a leading specialist in aseptic filling and packaging of compounds into syringes, vials and cartridges—first moved in to the ISTP in November 2009, originally occupying 24,794 of square feet in the 8025 Lamon Avenue building. After its fifth and latest expansion, Vetter now occupies almost 49,000 square feet of office, wet laboratory and storage space.
Global contract research organization Charles River expanded its footprint at the ISTP by 37 percent at the end of 2017, adding more than 9,000 square feet of office and laboratory space, bringing their total leasable area to 34,056 square feet. Charles River’s in vitro facility at the ISTP specializes in large molecule bioanalysis and genetic and in vitro toxicology for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, chemical, agrochemical and food companies.
