GVA Worldwide Members Join Forces On $25 Million Life Sciences Sale-Leaseback In Illinois

Des Plaines, IL - Two GVA Worldwide member firms recently combined energies to close a $25 million sale-leaseback transaction in Woodridge, Illinois on behalf of deCODE genetics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company with world headquarters in Iceland. 

Through the joint efforts of GVA Williams in suburban Chicago and GVA Kidder Mathews in Portland, Oregon, the client firm completed the sale-leaseback of its life sciences building and campus to two Oregon-based private investment groups, Big-T Woodridge, LLC and Woodridge Holdings, LLC.

GVA Worldwide represented both sides of the transaction.  Sandra Griggs and Chris Crnkovich, senior associates with the GVA Williams office in Des Plaines, Illinois, negotiated on behalf of the seller.  Joe deJager and Monte Haynes, senior investment brokers with GVA Kidder Mathews in Portland, represented the buyer.

deCODE’s decision to sell and lease back its Woodridge campus is allowing the company to leverage its assets to optimize its core business of genetic research and discovery.

“The company sought to take advantage of market conditions and investor appetite for well-leased commercial office buildings and, ultimately, to use the proceeds from the sale of the property to invest in its business,” said Ms. Griggs.

“At the same time, deCODE wanted to retain the ability to later build out the raw space and construct another facility on a landscaped portion of the 14-acre campus,” said Mr. Crnkovich.  “GVA Worldwide helped deCODE achieve its objectives through the sale-leaseback process."

The facility, located at 2501 West Davey Road, totals 102,230 square feet.  The building is situated within the Internationale Centre, an industrial park of mostly all big box distribution buildings.

The building features a mix of administrative office and lab space.  The administrative offices, accounting for approximately 18,130 square feet, are situated in a two-story space.  The balance of the building is devoted primarily to laboratory use, including four GMP “clean” labs and ten conventional “wet” labs.  Area surrounding the space provides additional office support functions.  The building features some 27,000 square feet of raw space that can be built out to accommodate immediate growth.

The north end of the building features a 20,000-square-foot expansion potential consisting of two equally sized floors.  Another 4.5 acres of land at the southwest corner can accommodate a new building totaling upwards of 65,000 square feet.

Part of GVA Worldwide’s marketing strategy was to execute a national marketing campaign reaching West Coast buyers who purchase properties at lower cap rates/higher purchase prices than Midwest buyers, Ms. Griggs said.

LaSalle Bank provided financing for the purchase.

About deCODE genetics, Inc
deCODE, a global biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Reykjavik, Iceland, applies its discoveries in human genetics to develop drugs and diagnostics for common diseases.  It is a world leader in gene discovery.  The company is advancing the clinical development of two compounds for the prevention of heart attacks and an anti-platelet compound for the prevention of arterial thrombosis, as well as DNA-based diagnostic tests to predict risk of type 2 diabetes, heart attack, arterial fibrillation/stroke, prostate cancer and breast cancer.