One of the year’s biggest industrial deals just got done in DuPage County

Wholesale Interiors is taking 551K sf from textbook supplier Follet Corporation

From left: Christopher Volkert, Brian Kling, and the property (Credit: Colliers International)
From left: Christopher Volkert, Brian Kling, and the property (Credit: Colliers International)

Demand for industrial space in Chicago just keeps growing.

Furniture company Wholesale Interiors has inked a 551,000-square-foot sublease for a warehouse property at 2805 Duke Parkway in Aurora, according to Colliers International, which brokered the deal.

The lease is good for the entire building, which was previously occupied by textbook supplier Follet Corporation. Wholesale Interiors’s sublease runs through 2022.

The deal is among the largest signed this year for a red-hot industrial market that is showing no signs of slowing down.

Vacancy for the Chicago industrial market stood at 6.3 percent in early 2019, the lowest level in nearly two decades. The low vacancy rate comes despite heightened industrial deliveries, with over 5 million-square-feet of new warehouse space coming online so far this year and another 7 million-square-feet expected to be delivered by the end of 2019.

DuPage County, where the warehouse in question resides, has even outperformed the rest of the industrial market, thanks to its access to O’Hare Airport and a number of new warehouse deliveries.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

“Users continue to be drawn to DuPage county and the modern warehouse product available in the area,” Christopher Volkert, executive vice president of Colliers said, in a statement.

The Duke Parkway warehouse includes 25,000-square-feet of office space, 74 dock doors, 153 car parking spaces and 73 trailer parking spaces. Follets was seeking $3.25 per square foot for the sublease, according to a marketing brochure for the property.

The building is owned by prominent industrial developer Duke Realty, which has been racking up major leases for its local warehouses.

Earlier this month, Duke signed Acer Service Corporation to a 50,000-square-foot lease extension at a Lockport complex, bringing the company’s total lease in the building to over 200,000 square feet. In April, the firm signed auto parts maker Old World Industries to a 354,000-square-foot lease at its facility in Bolingbrook.

The company is also looking to further capitalize on the hot O’Hare-area industrial market, with plans to develop a 155,0000-square-foot food distribution center in Elk Grove Village.

Colliers’ Volkert and Brian Kling represented Follett Corporation in the sublease deal.