With DuPage County’s hottest development rumor now a promise, local and regional leaders have begun to gauge the potential impact of the planned expansion of the Lucent Technologies Inc. campus in Naperville and Lisle.
The $250 million project will add 1.2 million square feet of operating space.
Lucent, based in Murray Hill, N.J., is a giant maker of telecommunications equipment that spun off from AT&T Corp. in 1996.
Construction of the two new buildings will start next month and be completed in 2000, company officials said.
The news that the company plans to bring up to 2,000 employees into the area will mean an economic boost to a healthy business corridor along the East-West Tollway, officials said. But it also begins a countdown to potential gridlock on the street system that feeds the complex.
Christine Jeffries, president of the Naperville Development Partnership, estimated every 300 employees Lucent brings in will mean $15 million flowing into the local economy. The partnership is a non-profit economic development agency funded by the city.
Jeffries said the project will give Naperville Community School District 203 as much as $2 million a year in property-tax revenue and Naperville $200,000 annually. But the plans have even greater importance.
“This was huge for the state,” she said.
Naperville will charge the company $980,000 in road-impact fees. Lisle officials, who have not calculated what they will receive in annual property taxes from the new development, said they will charge Lucent $900,000 in fees for road work.
Leaders of the global company said they considered sites around the world before deciding to consolidate research and development operations in DuPage County.
Lucent’s decision to expand brings a new sense of urgency to the efforts of DuPage County highway officials to ease traffic congestion in the road network around Naperville and Warrenville Roads.
The intersection, already considered to be operating beyond capacity, would likely be hopelessly clogged unless road improvements are made to offset Lucent’s planned growth, officials have said.
Lucent spokesman Robert Jerich said the Naperville building will be built at the northwest corner of Naperville and Warrenville Roads, just south of the company’s Indian Hill Main building at 2000 Warrenville Rd. The Lisle structure will go up south of Lucent’s Network Software Center at 2600 Warrenville.
The DuPage County Board has approved spending nearly $338,000 for a preliminary engineering study of ways to deal with traffic congestion in the area.
Among the possible solutions that Itasca-based Civiltech Engineering Inc. proposes to study are relocating some entrance and exit ramps to and from the tollway, building a Naperville Road overpass at Warrenville Road and carving out a new north-south road west of Naperville Road that would link Warrenville and Diehl Roads to new tollway ramps.
There are no cost estimates yet, but highway officials say the price tag likely will be high.
Highway officials plan to meet Thursday with representatives from Civiltech to begin work on the study, which is expected to take seven months.
Charles Tokarski, DuPage’s transportation chief, said the county may need to make interim improvements, such as widening portions of Naperville and Warrenville Roads, before tackling a long-term solution.
He also noted that traffic delays in the Naperville Road corridor suggested a need for improvements even if Lucent had opted to build its new facilities elsewhere.
Civiltech says 56,000 vehicles a day use the tollway interchange at Naperville Road. Naperville Road itself carries 26,000 vehicles a day north of Warrenville Road, according to Civiltech, and as many as 41,000 vehicles a day south of Diehl Road.
Naperville leaders said Wednesday they hope the Illinois Department of Transportation, the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, DuPage County, and officials from Naperville and Lisle are ready to work quickly to find a solution.
“There’s going to have to be a lot of coordination and a lot of commitment from a lot of different agencies,” said Bob Kallien, Naperville community development director.
Leaders of Naperville and Lisle had wondered for months which community would first see Lucent expansion plans. It turned out that Lucent’s growth will take place in the two simultaneously, as company officials announced they will open a five-story, 600,000-square-foot building in each town.
“We thought their best option would be Lisle and their second-best would be Naperville,” quipped Lisle Village Manager Carl Doerr. “I guess they made the right choice.”
Kallien said the announcement was in line with his office’s expectations.
“But it did seem for a while there like they were playing poker with us,” he said.
