This 863,000-square foot glass slipper is looking for its corporate Cinderella.
Located in Lake County, IL, 4 Overlook Point is a 31 acre, four building office campus purpose-built for today’s tech-forward business landscape. The campus features one primary, stand-alone data center and two secondary data centers complete with independent power backups, which, combined with its location in the heart of Chicagoland, makes it the perfect headquarters location for a major corporation. We spoke with the team at Woodcrest Capital, the family-owned commercial real estate company which acquired 4 Overlook Point, about this unique corporate campus.
A Fort Knox for data
A large technology company built the property in 1998 to serve as its headquarters, and chose to invest in the on-site data centers in anticipation of the data boom. The campus provides enterprise-scale infrastructure designed for sophisticated data management.
“The dedicated data centers allow the company to keep everything on-site, which lets them avoid outsourcing sensitive data to Amazon, Google, or similar,” says Eric Tank, Chief Technology Officer at Woodcrest Capital. “They can host it directly on-site and have complete control over that.”
Overlook Point supports high redundancy standards with features like chilled water storage, dual utility feeds and diesel generators.
“They overbuilt in a very good way,” says Michael Roy, President of Woodcrest Management Company. “If the grid goes down, our generators fire up. We have many levels of redundancy supporting the property. For a company that can’t afford for operations to go down, if there’s any type of natural disaster or power grid failure, we have the ability to keep the data centers up and running.”
Underground tunnels connect the buildings and form a cohesive campus. There’s a cafeteria with a large commercial kitchen, and capacity for a tenant to host corporate events onsite. In addition to the approximately 2,300 parking spaces spread across three garages, ample surface parking is available.
“With the previous tenant, it had a banking center, a doctor’s office with 10 offices, and a shipping center,” recalls James A. Ryffel, Founder and President of Woodcrest Capital. “It can really be its own city.”
Privacy in the heart of Chicagoland
4 Overlook Point’s Lake County location offers convenient access to amenities like resorts, parks and dining, as well as being located in the top-ranked school district in the U.S—all of which are major draws for executives and their families.
“Lake County is a really strategically placed area,” says Roy. “You’re 35 minutes from one of the biggest markets in the world. You’re 10 minutes from an executive airport.”
The right tenant would be positioned to benefit from the synergy of many nearby corporate headquarters supporting a large, highly educated labor pool.
“You can pull intellectual capital and working capital from Chicago, you can pull from Milwaukee,” explains Roy. “It’s really situated in a great part of the country, but also a great part of Chicagoland.”
Companies that want a property of this size are generally restricted to floors of a shared high rise downtown, with less control, less privacy and more difficulty parking. This site has the rare advantage of being a large, self-contained campus that a tenant can secure for themselves.
“I think this is the only property in America, and probably one of very few in the world, available for lease that offers this square footage and this kind of infrastructure to a single tenant,” says Ryffel.
The family-owned advantage
Woodcrest Capital was founded in 1981. The diversified real estate and investment firm has remained entirely under family ownership to preserve its independence ever since.
“It’s a lot easier to do business when you don’t have partners, because you have an ability to make quicker decisions, to be more flexible in the decision-making process and take risk,” explains Ryffel. “We seldom use attorneys in negotiating any of our leases, so we can often turn a lease around in a day.”
One major plus of family ownership is the ability to go all-in on commitments far into the future, without being distracted by the shifting priorities of investors or partners. Woodcrest Capital holds properties long-term and provides high-touch service for tenants, handling management, leasing and maintenance itself.
“We treat our tenants as a close relationship,” says Ryffel. “We have a team on the ground at the building, and their only responsibility is this building.”
The firm has the background and resources to support tenants in many ways beyond the dedicated staff handling day-to-day concerns.
“We also have a fairly large construction office with the ability to cost out improvements or remodeling in a very, very short period of time,” explains Ryffel, “and we do a lot of the construction in-house. So we are truly vertically integrated.”
Angling for a creative deal
Woodcrest Capital’s long-term focus and ability to accept risk mean that it can be extraordinarily flexible with transactions. It’s prepared to offer rates significantly below market to the right tenant or tenants.
“We really have not only a unique building, but a unique ability to make an incredible deal,” Roy says.
And if that requires thinking outside the box and coming up with terms that wouldn’t ordinarily be options?
“We’re prepared to structure an extraordinary deal to align with a tenant’s bottom line,” Ryffel says. “I don’t think there’s any limit to our creativity.”
To learn more about 4 Overlook Point, download the brochure.