Shaya Prager’s distressed office campus in Deerfield is faced with a significant vacancy with the upcoming departure of one of its largest tenants.
Home and security company Fortune Brands Innovations plans to relocate its headquarters from the 697,000-square-foot Corporate 500 complex in Deerfield to the former Horizon Therapeutics campus at 1 Horizon Way, Crain’s reported.
Details of the lease agreement, including its size and duration, were not disclosed. Fortune Brands said it plans to consolidate several U.S. offices into the complex, where it will occupy two of the three buildings previously owned by Horizon Therapeutics.
Fortune Brands has agreed to create 400 new jobs in Deerfield by 2027, increasing its workforce there from 183 to 583. This expansion is part of an agreement under Illinois’ EDGE program, which offers the company income tax incentives for qualifying hires over the next 15 years.
Fortune Brands’ departure leaves Prager’s New York-based Opal Holdings with a substantial vacancy to fill at a time when suburban office landlords are grappling with rising vacancies.
The firm is also dealing with a number of legal and financial problems across the United States, after it went on a $2 billion nationwide office buying spree during the pandemic.
It bought the Deerfield campus for $178 million ($255 per square foot) in 2021. Lender Unify sued the landlord for foreclosure last summer, claiming it is owed $106 million after Opal allegedly defaulted by not paying property taxes.
The Corporate 500 complex, once home to Caterpillar before its 2022 headquarters move to Texas, faces an uncertain future with few large-scale tenants to replace Fortune Brands.
— Andrew Terrell
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