Blackstone sells suburban Chicago industrial space

Blackstone Real Estate Advisors cashed out of a 915,640-square-foot industrial property in suburban Chicago, an area in high demand for big-box warehouses.

Real estate investment firm Exeter Property Group paid $65.8 million for Tinley Park Corporate Center at 18801 Oak Park Avenue, according to Cook County property records.

The property, which comes with 106 docks, parking space for 306 cars and 243 trailer stalls, is available for lease, a marketing pamphlet from Lee & Associates shows. It’s 30 miles to downtown Chicago and 43 miles to O’Hare International Airport, which processes more than 2 million metric tons of cargo worth more than $200 billion a year.

Chicago’s always-sturdy industrial market gained during the pandemic, mainly from the increased need for last-mile warehouses.

Rents surged 17.3 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier to a record of $5.90 per square foot, according to Savills.

Vacancy rates dropped to 8 percent from October through December, below the 8.6 percent pre-pandemic level. To keep up with demand, about 28.5 million square feet of big-box warehouses are in the pipelines, the most in 25 years.

Exeter paid over $100 million for about 30 industrial properties in 2012 expanding its portfolio in the Chicago area. Last year, it bought a 730,000-square-foot distribution center in suburban Joliet for about $45 million. The firm has more than 15 million square feet of industrial space in the Chicago market.

Exeter didn’t respond to requests for comment for the purchase.

Blackstone Real Estate Advisors sold a 282,000-square-foot industrial property to Mapletree US Management for $57.5 million last year. The firm’s real estate income trust, known as BREIT, bought a logistics portfolio from Cabot Properties for $2.8 billion in December. The deal handed BREIT 102 properties across the United States and 22 in Europe.

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