Single-family homes could soon rise on what for decades has been the northern portion of drugstore giant Walgreens Boots Alliance’s headquarters campus in suburban Chicago after homebuilder PulteGroup completed the purchase of 18 acres of land.
Pulte on Dec. 13 paid $5.1 million for buildings on the corporate campus in Deerfield, Illinois, that will be demolished as part of the long-planned residential conversion, according to Lake County property records.
The north suburban land sale is a key step in a plan first made public by Pulte nearly a year ago to buy part of the longtime Walgreens complex on Wilmot Road and knock down outdated and unwanted office space.
It continues a trend in Chicago’s suburbs and throughout the country of decades-old office headquarters campuses being sold for redevelopment to alternate uses.
Pulte’s recently approved plan is to build 42 single-family homes on the site, ranging from 2,722 to 3,899 square feet. Homes in the community, called Leclair Estates, will range from four to six bedrooms and will include two- or three-car garages, according to plans submitted to the village.
Atlanta-based Pulte plans to demolish office structures at 300, 302 and 304 Wilmot, along with a day care facility at 202 Wilmot. A walkway connecting structures was torn down in October.
Deerfield’s planning commission approved the plans in November, followed by approval by the village’s board of trustees at its Dec. 16 meeting.
Walgreens and Pulte did not respond to requests for comment from CoStar News, and it’s unclear how soon demolition will start.
Last February, Pulte said it hoped to obtain a zoning change and purchase the land by December, with demolition expected to be completed by this March. At the time, Pulte said it planned to complete construction of the homes by early 2028.
Walgreens had been looking to sell part of its 40-acre campus for about a year when Pulte disclosed its interest in the site.
Office redevelopments
Remote and hybrid work models have persisted nearly five years since the onset of COVID-19, leading many corporations to reduce their office space.
In some cases, that has meant selling parts of or entire sprawling corporate campuses to developers.
That includes industrial developer Dermody Properties’ ongoing conversion of Allstate’s former headquarters in Glenview, Illinois, into a logistics campus and Compass Datacenters’ ongoing project to demolish Sears’ former headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, into several buildings for data storage.
Some proposed conversions have encountered blowback from neighbors, including a high-profile example in Deerfield just across interstates 94 and 294.
Bridge Industrial attempted to buy drugmaker Baxter International’s campus to convert it into warehouses before that plan was shot down amid vocal opposition from residents. That led the board of trustees to move to create an outright ban on the development of uses such as last-mile distribution centers in Deerfield.
Pulte is no stranger to knocking down commercial properties to make way for homes, including at least two such deals in recent years in California: the purchase of an 11-acre office park in San Mateo in 2020 and a deal for a 6.3-acre shopping center in Saratoga in 2022.
For the record
Cushman & Wakefield brokers Sean Kropke and Keith Puritz represented the seller. CBRE brokers Tom Svoboda and Matt Ishikawa represented the buyer.