Q Center St Charles Campus Hits Market for Sale

A relic of the Arthur Andersen era in suburban Chicago is seeking a new steward and perhaps a new identity.

The Q Center, a sprawling hotel and corporate training campus in St. Charles, has hit the market, CoStar reported. The massive site at 1405 Fifth Avenue represents one of the final vestiges of the accounting titan that famously collapsed in 2002.

JLL brokers have been tapped to lead the sales effort for the 15-building campus along the Fox River. While a formal asking price hasn’t been made public, the offering arrives as the corporate retreat model faces a national reckoning. While remote work and tightened travel budgets become the standard, major players like General Electric and Boeing offloaded similar legacy training centers in 2024 in New York and Missouri, respectively.

For developers with an appetite for scale, the Q Center is an absolute beast. It boasts significant meeting space — 150,000 square feet — and has seen more than $30 million dollars in improvements to the property over the last decade, according to the outlet. JLL is pitching the massive site not just as a hospitality move, but also a prime redevelopment opportunity, highlighting the potential for residential or other uses on the vacant land and underutilized structures.

The massive property has a uniquely layered history. Originally built as a Catholic college in the early 1960s, it was scooped up by Arthur Andersen about a decade later to serve as its corporate education hub, according to the outlet. Even after the accounting firm’s epic downfall, a limited liability partnership tied to the firm retained ownership, routinely leasing it out to outside corporations like Chicago-based Accenture.

The large listing adds another chapter to the ongoing repositioning of the St. Charles lodging landscape.

A few miles to the southeast of the riverfront Q Center campus, the former Pheasant Run Resort is also approaching a second act. Once a sprawling suburban icon that fell into disrepair and was gutted by an arson fire, the resort structures were demolished over the last couple years, and the property remains mostly empty. Developer Vequity earlier this year pitched a plan to transform the former hospitality site into a modern retail village with 12 to 15 buildings for shops, restaurants and a potential new hotel.