Shaya Prager’s Troubled Office Campus Secures Huge Tenant

A blockbuster suburban Chicago office deal took a bite out of the market’s record-high vacancy.

Vantive, the kidney care spinoff of Baxter International, leased 670,000 square feet of the four-building Corporate 500 campus at 510 Lake Cook Road in Deerfield, a company spokesperson said.

The deal took 96 percent of the campus’ 698,00 square feet off the market, according to online listings. The company confirmed the size of the lease to The Real Deal and plans to invest $23 million into its headquarters as part of a state tax incentive agreement.

The company plans to add 50 full-time jobs under a 10-year tax credit deal with the state, via the Economic Development for a Growing Economy, or EDGE, program.

Investors have recently shown a willingness to engage in the Chicago suburbs’ struggling office market in hopes of a recovery. Occupancy rates as low as 68 percent plagued the suburbs headed into the year as vacancy ticked upward until this year’s first quarter, which brought the highest net absorption in suburban office since the pandemic. The region added 517,000 square feet of new leases after factoring out vacated ones, according to Colliers.

Not only is Vantive’s lease primed to inflate those numbers, but it’s set to lay another path forward for the distressed property, which has been in foreclosure since 2023, after Shaya Prager’s Opal Holdings was sued by lender Unify Financial Credit Union for defaulting on property tax and loan payments.

The lease should help stabilize the complex after it lost longtime anchor Caterpillar in 2022 and Fortune Brands earlier this year, but it’s still unclear how the lease was executed or who funded it.

Court filings show the leasehold interest in the property remains in foreclosure, while the ground beneath the campus is owned by an Opal-affiliated entity tied to Prager and his business partner Katherine Cartagena. That ground lease will remain in place for decades, meaning whichever party ends up controlling the buildings — Unify, Opal or a future buyer — could still owe rent to Prager’s entity.

It’s also unclear whether the lease was negotiated by Prager, the court-appointed receiver from Cushman & Wakefield or the lender. Public records show JLL was paid at least $2 million in commission for brokering the deal earlier this year, though it’s unclear whether future commission payments are still due. The receiver, and the respective attorneys for Unify and Opal’s ownership entity haven’t returned requests for comment.

Questions remain about the property’s future ownership and whether the foreclosure will continue to cloud efforts to redevelop or refinance the campus, even with a major tenant now in place.