Got an office building or corporate campus you’re getting ready to demolish? Why not offer it to area first responders for training before the implosions begin? That’s what Dermody Properties has done with the former Allstate campus in the Chicago-area community of Glenview. In addition to other training sessions by area police and SWAT teams, more than 650 firefighters from 20 communities have trained in live fire conditions there over the past two weeks with the Illinois Fire Service Institute in order to practice in “real world conditions they would face in the first few minutes of a fire in a high-rise building.” The training was especially meaningful given the deaths of two Chicago firefighters in the line of duty earlier this month.

Dermody Properties Midwest Region Partner Neal Driscoll said first responder departments from the Village of Glenview “reached out to us shortly after acquiring the campus with interest in completing exercises before the buildings were demolished. This was a rare opportunity to train on a property of scale, since it includes a campus of varying low- and mid-rise office buildings … Our redevelopment of the office campus to modern industrial provided a window of opportunity for area first responders to train.”

Soon the 232-acre property will be the home of what Dermody calls The Logistics Campus, offering 3.2 million sq. ft. of buildings in various sizes, with the flexibility to accommodate build-to-suits, Dermody said.