Demolition of former Alcatel-Lucent office building starts but future of Naperville site unknown
Demolition of the office building and parking deck on the former Alcatel-Lucent campus in Naperville is underway but what the property’s new owner plans to do with the site hasn’t been disclosed.
Oak Brook-based Franklin Partners purchased the 40-acre parcel at Naperville and Warrenville roads for $4.75 million in April. A demolition permit was issued July 28 allowing the company to raze the 500,000-square-foot building at 1960 Lucent Lane and the three-story parking garages on each side.
The building at 2000 Lucent Lane, to the north, is not part of the demolition. An overhead bridge connecting 1960 and 2000 Lucent Lane will be removed, permit diagrams show.
Lucent Technologies built the glass-and-steel dome complex in 2000, which can be seen from Interstate 88, before it was acquired by Alcatel, a French company, in 2006. The merged company was sold to Nokia in 2016.
Franklin Partners did not respond to requests for comment on the demolition or future plans for the property. City officials said no development plans have been submitted.
At one point, Franklin was considering a proposal to build a a warehouse facility at the northwest corner of the property but later abandoned the idea after the Naperville City Council made it clear it would not be supported. Later, the council tweaked its zoning code to keep warehouses and distribution centers out of the Interstate 88 research and design corridor.
One reason behind the change, Mayor Scott Wehrli said, were concerns that truck-based facilities would have a negative effect on residential and office properties because of their poor visual aesthetics and the increased traffic, noise and light pollution they generate.
Scott Day, an attorney representing Franklin, said the company decided it would instead market the property for technology-focused businesses.
At one point, Lucent and Alcatel were large Naperville employers and once Nokia purchased the merged firm, consolidating all of its operations into the northern building, it became a major presence in the city. At its peak, Nokia employed about 12,000 people in Naperville.
This is not Franklin Partners first property acquisition in the city, In 2018, it and Wright Heerema Architects purchased the former Naperville headquarters for OfficeMax, redeveloping the building into an amenity-rich, multitenant office building.
