United Business Mail signs lease for 200K sf facility by O’Hare west access route

The mail-sorting company's new facility is part of wave of demand for industrial space

From the top: 756 Bryn Mawr Ave and O'Hare International Airport (Credit: Google Maps and Piper via Flickr)
From the top: 756 Bryn Mawr Ave and O'Hare International Airport (Credit: Google Maps and Piper via Flickr)

Mail-sorting company United Business Mail signed a lease to become the sole tenant of a 200,000 square-foot industrial facility just west of O’Hare Airport, part of a wave of the new demand for industrial space in Chicago’s northwest suburbs.

Located in suburban Itasca, about two miles west of the nation’s second-busiest airport and 25 miles from Chicago’s Loop, the new facility will more than double United Business Mail’s footprint in the area, RE Journals reported.

Steve Kohl of Colliers International represented the tenant in the deal.

Interest in office and industrial space is expected to pick up in towns like Itasca and neighboring Elk Grove Village as the Illinois Tollway inches closer to its goal of opening western access to O’Hare by 2022. This week, the highway operator struck a deal with Canadian Pacific Railway to build their new route over existing tracks, brightening the project’s prospects.

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Bolstered by the rise of e-commerce, an ongoing expansion in the airport’s cargo capacity is cranking up demand for nearby warehouse space, and a report published by CBRE this week put Chicago at the top of its list of lucrative metro areas for industrial property developers.

In the past year, the city jumped from 15th to ninth place among the country’s most desirable industrial markets, according to Marcus & Millichap’s annual North American Investment Forecast.

And between January and March, the vacancy rate of Chicago-area big-box industrial properties also dropped for the first time since 2016. [RE Journals] — Alex Nitkin