The demolition of the former Motorola Headquarters in Franklin Park is now complete.
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“It’s amazingly quick in terms of how quickly they brought the building down,” said John P. Schneider, the village’s director of community development. “The guy tearing it down with the wrecking ball was like a surgeon; he knew exactly where and how to hit the building to bring it down.”
San Francisco-based Digital Realty, which specializes in digital infrastructure for cloud-based computing, purchased the property at 9401 W. Grand Ave. last year. And in January of this year, the demolition of the former Motorola Headquarters property was kicked off with a press conference involving village elected officials taking a swing at the historic building with sledgehammers.
Now all that’s left of the building is piles of rubble that demolition cranes are sorting through.
Digital Realty plans to build a data center expansion at the site to complement the facility it already has in Franklin Park at 9333-9377 Grand Ave. The plans for Digital Realty’s expansion within the village include recycling as much as it can of the former Motorola’s building materials during the demolition, according to information from the company.
Additionally, Digital Realty plans to build a 78,000-square-foot ComEd substation to handle its new 470,000-square-foot data storage center’s increased use of the village’s electrical grid.
“The new power plant needs to be brought in on the railroad tracks to the side of the property,” said Schneider.
After Motorola left, the Grand Avenue property become home to different commercial users including Matsushita Industrial, Telecom Central and Houston Foods. However, the 18.5-acre former Motorola Headquarters property had been vacant for nearly 20 years before Digital Realty decided to purchase it in 2016.
Alex V. Hernandez is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.