Ace Hardware Begins Renovations at New HQ

The former McDonald’s campus in Oak Brook. Image courtesy of JLL

Ace Hardware Corp. is renovating a building in Oak Brook, Ill., to serve as its new headquarters.

The 250,000-square-foot structure, located at 2915 Jorie Blvd., was the main building on McDonald’s former corporate campus. Skender and Environmental Systems Design have been hired as the contractor and engineer for the project, respectively. CBRE Design Collective is the project’s architect.

Situated on 80 acres in the Chicago suburbs, the former McDonald’s campus hosts three Brutalist-style buildings, which were constructed in the 1970s and have been vacant since the fast food giant moved its base of operations to downtown Chicago in 2018. Paul Mitchell Systems co-founder John Paul DeJoria acquired the property from McDonald’s for $25.4 million the following year, amid a surge of investment in suburban Chicago-area offices.

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Upon completion of the building’s renovation and modernization, which began last month and is slated for completion in the second half of the year, the property will include workstations for employees and 150 conference rooms. Also featured will be 12 pantries and a variety of collaboration spaces and amenities.

The first floor of an existing parking garage will be converted into an amenity suite that will include a fitness center, a conference center and multi-purpose room and a cafeteria, as well as a separate dining center with a commercial kitchen.

Ace plans to maintain many of the original architectural features of the building, including the atrium and original lightwells. Demountable office and conference partitions will be used in lieu of less sustainable, more expensive drywall to create soundproof and private interior office space.