More than two years after a fire destroyed Morgan Li’s large warehouse in Chicago Heights, the maker of merchandise display fixtures for national retailers celebrated a new, larger facility Tuesday.
The cavernous, 240,000-square-foot building at 1001 Washington Ave., just recently finished, is on the site where the previous warehouse burned Feb. 6, 2023.
The third-generation business is headquartered at 383 E. 16th St. in Chicago Heights, where it operates a 275,000-square-foot manufacturing plant.
Andy Rosenband, chief executive officer, and his brother, Jonathan, who is Morgan Li’s president, are the third generation of the Rosenband family. Their grandfather started the business eight decades ago in Chicago’s Bridgeport community.
“The fire was obviously a catastrophic event,” Andy Rosenband said at the dedication ceremony, where members of the Chicago Heights Fire Department were on hand.
The company said a little more than a year after the fire it would rebuild at the same location. The new warehouse will also eventually consolidate temporary, leased warehouse space Morgan Li has in Chicago Heights and Matteson.
Cook County Clerk Monica Gordon, a Chicago Heights resident, spoke at the dedication about “the impact Morgan Li has brought to this community.”
Gordon said the fire “could have been the end of this long-standing legacy.”
“Instead of giving up and moving out, Morgan Li dug in and stood tall,” said Gordon, a former Cook County commissioner. “They have turned tragedy into opportunity.”
Multiple fire departments responded to the extra-alarm fire at the Chicago Heights building.
At the time of the fire, seven of the 67 warehouse employees were there to begin the morning shift, but nobody was hurt.
The company bought the Chicago Heights warehouse location during early 2022 after leasing space there for many years.
The investigation that followed included the Chicago Heights Fire Department, the Illinois State Fire Marshal and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The company said the cause of the fire was never determined.
Morgan Li leases 55,000 square feet of warehouse space in Chicago Heights and 190,000 square feet in Matteson, but that will eventually be brought under the roof of the new building.
The company also built a separate 40,000-square-foot painting building for finished product.
Phillip Rosenband, father of Andy and Jonathan, said his dad, Maurice Rosenband, started the business, then called Par Steel Products & Adjustable Shelving, in 1943.
The original product was metal radiator covers, then moved into large shelving to hold backroom inventory at retailers such as Home Depot and Sam’s Club, Phillip said Tuesday.
“From there we got into the front-end of the store,” he said.
What look like high-end picnic tables stacked by the dozens inside the warehouse are actually merchandise display tables, of varying heights, destined for retailers Gap and Old Navy, Philip Rosenband said.
Walmart is another customer, with the company turning out shelving and other display setups for the retailer.
The new Chicago Heights warehouse will be largely automated, with something that resembles a forklift but obviously goes by a different description roaming the concrete floors each day.
Although there will be an operator inside, the onboard computer will tell it exactly where to deposit or retrieve finished product as it weaves between aisles of tall racks.
The night of the fire, Morgan Li officials got in touch with their product suppliers in China, where it also manufactures, Phillip said.
“We were never out of stock,” he said.
While the company might have decided to throw in the towel and step away, “that’s not how we made the company up,” Phillip said.
The brothers said with looming tariffs that could affect them and so many other companys, Morgan Li is in a good position to adjust and ride them through. What the company makes in the U.S. it also makes in China, giving it sufficient production to navigate a tariff tide.
For now, with imported product due to cost more, Morgan Li is “able to do more here where it makes pricing sense,” Andy Rosenband said.
He and his brother took over operation of the company in 2009. Phillip Rosenband said his title is vice president of business development.
The company transformed into Morgan Marshall in 1987 and its products could be found in Walmart, Old Navy and Lowe’s, according to the company.
Morgan Li, apart from its retail products, makes furnishings for student residential buildings and hotels.
