Walgreens shedding two-thirds of suburban Chicago HQ campus

Walgreens Boots Alliance is putting two-thirds of its Deerfield headquarters up for sale to cut costs in the era of remote work.

The American-British-Swiss drugstore giant based north of Chicago has listed its offices at 200 and 300 Wilmot Road, and will relocate campus workers to offices at 100 Wilmot Road, Crain’s reported.

While the size of the listing in square footage was not disclosed, the move will allow the firm to shed two-thirds of its 40-plus acre campus along Interstate 294, where it has been based since 1975. The sales price of the property hasn’t been publicized either.

“We recognize the way we work has changed and with our hybrid model valued by our team members, we have underutilized space on our Deerfield Campus,” a Walgreens spokesman said in a statement. “To reimagine the space to fit our current needs and create efficiencies that allow us to invest in the business, we have made the decision to sell several buildings that are part of our support office.”

The downsizing adds Walgreens to a growing list of big companies retooling their office strategies after employees began to work from home during the pandemic.

Allstate was among the highest-profile local companies to embrace the shift in a big way, selling its entire Northbrook corporate campus to an industrial developer last year.

Across the tollway from Walgreens, medical equipment maker Baxter International recently struck a deal to sell its 101-acre campus to Chicago developer Bridge Industrial.

The move by Walgreens could allow its former offices to be redeveloped into something else — or add hundreds of thousands of square feet to a suburban office market slammed by a record number of office vacancies.

Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer said in a memo to employees last week the new real estate plan would allow the firm to “continue managing costs through the efficient ways of working we’ve adopted over the past few years.”

He said the office changes “are not a signal that we want people in the office less,” but are intended to still offer better spaces conducive to employee “connection, collaboration and innovation.”

The office transition will happen “in phases” and no changes are planned at the company’s downtown office at the Old Post Office, Brewer said.

It’s unclear how many employees have been based at the Deerfield campus since the start of the pandemic. The company said in 2018 that the campus would serve as a home base for about 3,200 Walgreens employees after roughly 1,300 employees were relocated downtown to the redeveloped Old Post Office.

The Wilmot Road buildings aren’t the only portion of the Walgreens headquarters campus up for sale, according to Crain’s.

An Arizona real estate firm last year hired a broker to sell a 37.5-acre site nearby along Lake Cook Road with a series of buildings that Walgreens leases through August 2023, but no longer occupies. Walgreens sold that property in a 2013 sale-leaseback deal for $85 million.

— Dana Bartholomew