Future possibilities for the McDonald's Oak Brook campus

When McDonald's hired me in the late 1970s to design its Oak Brook corporate headquarters, which opened in the 1980s, it was a vision realized by then-CEO Fred Turner of a campus in a park-like setting that would serve as a "superior work environment" for the company's employees.

While the company has decided to go in a different direction nearly 40 years later by moving its headquarters to downtown Chicago, it also signals a new beginning for the 74-acre campus, ripe with possibilities due to its sheer size and natural beauty.

So, what does the future hold for this property that was so thoughtfully designed at a time when many corporations saw suburban campuses as the best work environments for their employees? Today, many companies, like McDonald's, are interested in urban locations, but some very large companies still prefer the suburbs for a myriad of reasons.

In fact, the McDonald's Oak Brook campus is one of the 10 sites proposed in the Illinois bid for the Amazon HQ2. With an existing office building, which was master-planned for expansions up to 750,000 square feet, on-site training center and hotel, the McDonald's campus could serve the needs of a large corporation interested in a location that affords easy access to both Chicago airports and other transportation routes while offering the open, natural setting urban locations can't provide.

Yet, adaptive reuse may be a more viable option for the McDonald's Oak Brook headquarters. Something like high-end multifamily or senior housing offers a strong possibility for the future of the campus.

The landscape of the property is the kind of bucolic setting most anyone would enjoy as the backdrop to their home. Because of this, a mixed-use project incorporating residential and lifestyle-oriented spaces like restaurants and entertainment venues, healthcare facilities, outdoor recreation and some limited retail is a strong option for this campus. Plus, hospitality already exists on the property with the recently renovated 218-room Hyatt Lodge.

On a technical level, the unique design of the property's existing 255,000-square-foot office building lends itself to residential use. Unlike many office buildings that are simple boxes, this one is set among the contours of the land surrounding it, integrating with the natural environment in the way that well-designed residential buildings often do.

The conversion to residential, meaning adding kitchens and bathrooms, is quite feasible based on my own experience of having converted the former American Furniture Mart on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago to a mixed-use project and the transformation of one-third of the IBM Building to The Langham, one of Chicago's most prestigious five-star hotels.

According to a recent report from Marcus & Millichap, demand for new senior housing will continue to be driven by an aging population, and Chicago is one of the top destinations for seniors due to a thriving cultural scene and world-class health care.

Baby Boomers are only just beginning to enter their senior years and developers of senior housing are interested in adaptive rehabilitation of existing buildings to serve this expanding market.

Though rezoning the site for residential use would be necessary, senior housing would actually reduce the total population on the property of the campus in comparison to the McDonald's headquarters, which employs approximately 1,200 people. Depending on the sizes developed for senior housing units, there may be on 400-700 people living in such a reused development. That reduction of people on the campus would mean less parking and less traffic on peripheral roads. The necessary rezoning should not be an insurmountable issue as it would not negatively affect the quality of life in Oak Brook. One could even argue it would improve it.

McDonald's may be leaving Oak Brook for new opportunities that come with a different location, but with its departure, a new opportunity presents itself to transform these magnificent buildings in this superior setting to something that will serve the community well.

• Dirk Lohan is a principal at Wight & Company with offices in Chicago and Darien.