Silliker, Inc., has broken ground on a new, 71,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art lab testing facility on an 11-acre site near Steger Road and Illinois 394 in Crete, IL. The company will consolidate its Chicago Heights and South Holland facilities when the build-to-suit project is completed in summer 2012.

The leading internationally accredited provider of food safety, quality and nutrition services, looked at multiple existing properties in the city and near south suburbs before choosing to embark on a build-to-suit development project.

After performing a top-down analysis that considered all aspects of facility usage – location, layout, energy consumption – we came to the conclusion that building a brand new facility was the optimal and most cost effective way to achieve our objectives on a long-term basis, said Silliker's President Johannes Burlin.

The new building will house Silliker's research and development team and feature a commercial testing laboratory. It will be one of the largest food testing labs in the US.

Robert Sevim and Rich Dale, with international real estate services firm Studley, advised Silliker throughout the real estate process.

"We investigated a myriad of existing buildings near the city and in suburban locations that were easily accessible for Silliker's workforce, said Sevim. While there is a healthy supply of product in the locations we looked at, it was determined that retrofitting an existing property would have been a costly and less than optimal option."