On a recent Thursday night, Lisle Community Development Director Tom Ewers attended a public hearing on a planned expansion for Molex Corp. A bit later, he hustled to another meeting on a planned townhouse development in Lisle, and then a third meeting about a proposed office park there.
It was a hectic night after a full day at the office, but Ewers’ schedule likely will become more frenetic in the months to come. After something of a slump, Lisle is starting to experience a burst of construction.
“We’ve got three different office buildings under construction in town,” he said, “and hearings going on for six more projects.”
Molex, however, is taking center stage. The international manufacturer of electronic and fiber optic components has been in Lisle since 1972 and has expanded steadily, fueling speculation that it might someday outgrow the village and leave.
But in the last five years, Molex has acquired three buildings and about 23 acres around its headquarters to accommodate the plan company officials formally introduced to village officials.
The proposal calls for a 46-acre world headquarters campus that would add space for engineering, training and general offices and probably re-route roads.
The new Molex campus would boost the number of jobs to about 940 from 639, said Martin Slark, Molex corporate vice president and the company’s president of the Americas region. He declined to reveal an estimated cost of the project.
Representatives of the Fortune 500 company said that the project will allow Molex, which has grown considerably over the last few years, to remain in Lisle for the foreseeable future. The plans call for the addition of nearly 80,000 square feet of office space.
If the recent public hearing is any indication, the Molex plan may encounter little if any resistance. Officials asked few questions, and the dozen residents in attendance did not argue whether the plans will go ahead. Rather, residents asked what would happen to traffic flow after the improvements are made.
Residents who addressed the panels said they like the rural look of their streets and do not want hundreds of cars a day accessing the site through their neighborhood.
Neighbor Randi Nott said she worries about small children waiting for buses in the area before school.
“It’s just such an ideal situation with all the wildlife we have,” she said. “It’s a scary thing for me to think of all the cars coming through there early in the morning.”
If the review of Molex’s proposal goes smoothly, the village may approve plans formally as early as April, Ewers said. Slark said construction will run for about three years.
“Obviously, we have a lot of long-term, valued employees who like Lisle,” he said. “We’ve been here a long time, and we have a lot of roots in the area.”
Lisle has been pleasant for Lucent Technologies, too, another major employer. Next month, the village will begin public hearings on a Lucent proposal to build a 1.2-million-square-foot expansion, one of the six major projects that will be considered early next year, Ewers said.
The latest building boom comes after Lisle was leapfrogged in previous booms that hit Oak Brook, Downers Grove and Naperville, Ewers said. The village caught up, only to slow down in the late 1980s, he said.
Ewers said Lisle was hurt by county fees imposed on developers for their projects’ impact on traffic and the county’s stringent storm water-management standards.
Officials reduced the so-called impact fees over the years, and the initial sting over storm water management has eased.
Also, the village is benefiting from its location along the East-West Tollway. Lisle’s spot on that artery was enhanced dramatically in 1989, when the North-South Tollway was built along Lisle’s eastern border, Ewers said, making it a town at the crossroads of two major roadways.
Lisle’s office occupancy has remained high, about 98 percent, even during economic downturns, and planners designed village roads to handle traffic volume projected years from now, Ewers said.
On a larger scale, “a change in market conditions” is spurring construction nationally, Ewers said.
“Economically speaking, there’s going to be a resurgence in development activity,” Ewers said. “We’re just happy we’re getting our part of it now.”
