BP looking to sell majority of sprawling Naperville campus

BP is looking to sell a large portion of its Naperville campus, the latest large chunk of suburban office space to be vacated.

The oil company hired CBRE to market 85 acres on its 150-acre campus at 150 Warrenville Road, according to Crain’s.

BP in the next three years is vacating four buildings on that part of its mile-long property on the north side of Interstate 88, though it will keep three others that will be redeveloped.

A number of other companies have left large office complexes in the suburbs over the last decade — including Motorola Solutions, GE Healthcare and AT&T — and the resulting empty buildings have contributed to the high suburban office vacancy rate.

But CBRE’s David Justh, who is marketing the BP property along with David Prell and Jeff Kapcheck, said the property is a redevelopment opportunity. The site is zoned for office, research and industrial uses.

BP spokesperson Michael Abendhoff said the company expects to maintain the roughly 1,000 employees on the campus. But it has gradually moved hundreds of employees from its Naperville campus to Downtown Chicago over the past decade, most recently in 2016 when it shuffled about 200 jobs to its office at 30 South Wacker Drive, according to Crain’s.

The large abandoned corporate campuses include the former GE Healthcare property in Barrington and the former Motorola Solutions headquarters in Schaumburg. But Schaumburg officials are looking at ways to convert the Motorola property into a large mixed-use development, and New Jersey-based Somerset Development is eyeing the former AT&T campus in Hoffman Estates for a similar overhaul.

Franklin Partners, meanwhile, bought the former OfficeMax headquarters in Naperville, with plans to revamp the 350,000-square-foot property and lease it in smaller pieces. [Crain’s] — John O’Brien