Nitrile glove manufacturer to locate in portion of former Caterpillar plant near Montgomery

Another firm has leased space in the former Caterpillar, Inc. plant near Montgomery.

U.S. Medical Glove Company LLC (USMGC) announced Aug. 26 it has signed a 15-year lease for almost one million square feet of the plant located at Route 31 and Caterpillar Drive in Oswego Township to serve as a nitrile glove machine fabrication and glove production factory.

The firm is the only manufacturer of American-made nitrile glove machines

By making the machines in the same building as the gloves are made USMGC can ensure the most stable and reliable supply of Nitrile gloves in the world, the firm said in a statement.

“American customer service, reliability and quality control can only be delivered by eliminating dependence on foreign made machines, not just foreign made gloves,” U.S. Medical Glove CEO, Dylan Ratigan said in the statement.

The new USMGC factory will house up to 80 American-made nitrile glove machines, capable of supplying 8.1 billion gloves annually. In addition, the factory will house 12 chemotherapy specialty nitrile glove lines producing one billion chemotherapy rated nitrile gloves per year.

“The strategic vision of four major integrated machine making and glove making hubs will provide more than 3,000 direct jobs and 10,000 indirect jobs to be created in the U.S.,” the statement reads.

Reich Brothers Inc., a White Plains, New York-based firm that specializes in redeveloping industrial properties, purchased the 4-million-square-foot plant on Route 31, just south of the village, from the heavy equipment manufacturer for $68.5 million last March.

Reich Brothers has since renamed the property “The Grid” and is marketing it as an industrial park to new industrial tenants.

In a presentation to Montgomery Village Board in January, Charlene Coulombe-Fiore, executive director of the Montgomery Economic Development Corporation, announced that a manufacturing firm will occupy a 170,000-square-foot portion of the plant, while a trucking firm will use a 10-acre portion of a parking lot on the plant site for truck parking.

Meanwhile, Coulombe-Fiore said that Caterpillar, which first opened the plant in 1957, has leased back 100,000 square feet of the plant for its own operations and has kept 500 engineering and some product support jobs on-site.

In a related matter, consultants for the village reached a preliminary determination in June that the plant site is eligible for designation as a tax increment financing (TIF) district under state law.

Reich Brothers has asked the village to designate the property as a TIF district as part of its effort to redevelop and market the site to multiple new industrial tenants.

Responding to Reich Brothers’ annexation and TIF district request, the village board in April voted to retain Teska Associates of Plainfield, at a cost not to exceed $23,000, to complete a study to determine if the Caterpillar site meets the criteria under state law for TIF district designation.

“Teska has begun their study and a preliminary report indicates that the former Caterpillar plant site is eligible,” Sonya Abt, the village’s director of community development, wrote in a June 23 memo to the village board.

If the plant site is annexed to the village and designated a TIF district, its assessed value would be frozen at a base level for up to 23 years. Reich Brothers would continue to pay property taxes to local taxing districts at that base assessment level. However, any assessment increases on the property beyond the base level during that same period of up to 23 years would be placed in a TIF fund that would be administered by the village and used to pay for improvements to the plant site.

In a letter to Village President Matt Brolley, Bernard Citron, an attorney for the property owners, noted his clients are seeking TIF district status for the plant site in order to rehab and reposition the 64-year-old facility “into a modern industrial development” that will house multiple tenants involved in industrial manufacturing and distribution.

Citron said his clients estimate the potential TIF-eligible expenses on the site at about $50 million.

“Due to the Illinois property tax structure, there is a need for TIF incentives to balance the cost of improvements and the rental structure available on the campus [plant site],” Citron said.