Glenview Office Conversion to Industrial Planned at Caremark Towers

A long-dormant corner of Glenview’s office market is back in a developer’s sight, with a local industrial player testing whether the suburb that has already absorbed one massive workspace-to-warehouse remake is willing to greenlight another.

Former Sterling Bay industrial chief Scott Gibbel plans to present his vision Dec. 10 to Glenview’s New Development Commission to replace the mostly empty Caremark Towers with nearly 400,000 square feet of new warehouses, Crain’s reported. His newly launched firm, Curtis Ashton Partners, wants to level the two aging office buildings at 2211 Sanders Road and build a 29-acre, 395,000-square-foot industrial park dubbed O’Hare Park 294, according to a village filing.

The concept mirrors — and expands on — a proposal Dermody Properties floated in 2023 for a 300,000-square-foot complex on the same site. Dermody, the developer behind the industrial takeover of the 232-acre former Allstate campus just to the south, won commission approval but never secured a rezoning from the village board, The Real Deal reported at the time. Rising interest rates killed Dermody’s plan by year’s end.

Gibbel’s goes bigger by tacking on a vacant parcel along Interstate 294 that he aims to buy from Northwestern Memorial Hospital. His team says the project would serve “shallow bay” users — light manufacturers and R&D tenants — who have been boxed out as developers chase bulk warehouse demand. He hopes to start demolition this spring and deliver all three buildings by summer 2027, building on spec.

Still, the market around him isn’t exactly roaring. Dermody has struggled to fill portions of its Logistics Campus, envisioned at 3.2 million square feet at full buildout. And while Glenview planners liked the 2023 version of the Caremark plan, a core group of Mission Hills residents didn’t. They’re now reviving their opposition with an online petition ahead of next month’s hearing on the Gibbel proposal.

Caremark Towers’ fractured ownership doesn’t simplify matters. DTS Properties bought the taller building at 2211 Sanders Road for $2.3 million in 2022, while the Farbman Group picked up its neighbor at 2215 Sanders for $2.2 million. None of the owners or Gibbel are talking publicly.

The proposal reopens familiar fault lines for Glenview residents, as the village has watched residents push back on major redevelopment bids before, from a Core Spaces single-family rental plan to an apartment conversion of the nearby Renaissance hotel.

— Eric Weilbacher