Data Center Developer Compass To Buy Sprawling Former Sears Campus
The 273-acre former Sears headquarters campus in Hoffman Estates has a new data center developer owner.
Dallas-based Compass Datacenters has signed a contract to buy the property, Crain’s Chicago Business reported, citing sources familiar with the transaction.
Village officials have told the Daily Herald, which originally reported the news, that a group was in the process of performing due diligence on the property, put up for sale by owner Transformco some 18 months ago. The campus includes a massive 2.4M SF office complex that real estate analysts had already predicted would be repurposed for industrial use or a data center.
The campus isn't far from the area north of Bell Works Chicagoland where Microsoft plans to build two 207K SF data centers.
Calls to Transformco and Colliers, the broker for the property, weren't returned as of Bisnow's publication, and the Daily Herald reported village officials were tight-lipped on any details beyond that the property was under contract. A previous interested party dropped out earlier this year after struggling to find financing, according to the paper.
Crain’s identified that prospective buyer as Yondr, another data center company, noting the state has become a hotbed for data center activity given Illinois’ generous incentives that include exemption from state and local sales and use taxes as well as a construction wage credit for some projects.
Transformco, Sears’ parent company, put the expansive campus on the market in 2021 following a 2018 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that ultimately saw the 120-year-old chain shutter nearly all of its stores. As of late June, there were only 12 Sears department stores in existence, down from more than 4,000 at its peak, per GlobeSt.
The former Sears site includes seven office buildings and 120 acres of undeveloped land. Its assessed value was $50M as of 2021, down two-thirds over about a 10-year span.
Should the sale complete, Compass would likely raze the site to make way for warehouse-type structures capable of housing numerous servers, Crain's reported. The outlet noted such a project could represent billions of dollars in revenue, but far fewer jobs than its office predecessor.
UPDATE, JULY 20, 7:10 P.M. CT: This story and headline have been updated to include new information about the buyer of the campus.
