Source: Craine's Chicago Business
Author: Julie Johnsson

In a new twist on corporate downsizing, cash-strapped United Airlines has put a 32-acre chunk of its Elk Grove Township headquarters on the market.

The undeveloped land lies in two parcels east and west of United's corporate offices at 1200 E. Algonquin Road. The land is vacant now, but in better times it was home to soccer fields and overflow parking for airline employees.

"It's part of our overall efforts to reduce costs," a United spokesman says of the real estate sale. "It's land that we've identified as surplus."

United hired ProTen Realty Group to broker the site, which a real estate official estimates should sell for $5 to $8 per square foot, netting United close to $10 million.

That's a fraction of the $2.5 billion in cost cuts and new capital that United says it must wring from operations to avert a cash crisis this quarter and to attract the financing it needs to emerge from bankruptcy protection.

The airline has also reached tentative agreements with leaders of all but one of its unions as it seeks $725 million in labor concessions. The contracts must still be ratified by the unions' rank-and-file members.