Moss Leases 105,000-SF Building

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL-Moss Inc. has signed a 10-year lease for the 105,000-square-foot 2600 Elmhurst Rd. Built in 1995, the property is owned by Mirvac Industrial Trust and located in the O’Hare submarket. Marat Safir, president of Taurus Realty Partners, represented Moss in the deal, while Mirvac was represented by Chris Nelson of Lee & Associates.

“We focused on the O’Hare market because, with a lot of shipments and personnel coming in and out, being located close to the airport was an obvious choice,” Safir tells GlobeSt.com. “We also wanted to find a location close enough to their existing facility so they could retain personnel. This is a good central location.”

Moss’ new lease represents a consolidation of two facilities it previously occupied in Lincolnwood, IL, as well as a relocation of some operations from its headquarters in Belfast, ME. “They make displays for all the big trade shows and a large number of corporate clients,” Safir says. “Chicago is a big city for trade shows, and this is one of the primary facilities for the company where they make and assemble these before they go out to the trade shows and corporate functions.”

The move is also an expansion for the firm, which provides tensioned fabric for trade shows and previously occupied a total of about 40,000 square feet. The Elk Grove Village building offers 11,500 square feet of office, and the remainder of warehouse and light manufacturing space. Mirvac has owned the property for about three years, since it was acquired from CenterPoint Properties for nearly $9 million, sources say.

“The facility itself worked for a lot of reasons – namely that it has a large office component that fits our needs almost perfectly and we didn’t have to change much of the configuration,” Safir says. “The warehouse space had the right ceiling heights – 28-foot clear – and before their ceiling heights were much lower and they were in functionally obsolete space. This building allows their work flow and process to be a lot more efficient and offered more open space to work with and the right amount of loading.”

Safir declined to disclose the asking lease rate on the deal. “The landlord did a good job of marketing the building very aggressively in a market with quite a few options to choose from,” he says. “They did a good job of finding the right tenant to take this space.”

Overall occupancy in the O’Hare submarket is around 88%, according to Transwestern’s mid-year industrial market report. “It has its troubles as every other market is having, but I think being in the middle of Chicago and one of the busiest airports dominated by freight and air cargo industries, O’Hare will survive,” Safir says. “There are definitely higher vacancies than normal, but there’s still a pulse and some activity with a flurry of renewals going on. Hopefully in six to twelve months, we’ll see the air clear in that market.”