Trucking company spends $6M on vacant Joliet land

A Phoenix company paid $6 million for 16 acres of vacant land in Joliet that it aims to transform into a trucking terminal.

Knight-Swift Transportation bought the land at the northeast corner of Laraway and Patterson roads, west of Preston Heights from Joliet Bulk, Barge & Rail, the Chicago Business Journal reported.

Joshua Hearne and colleague Reinier Pranger at Cawley Chicago represented the seller. Colliers represented the buyer.

As demand rises for industrial-zoned sites, trucking in particular, “there is a lack of those available sites,” Hearne said.

The sale comes on the heels of several notable industrial deals in the area.

Crow Holdings plans to build a 760,000-square-foot industrial warehouse in the southern Chicago suburb of Matteson. It will have 100 exterior loading docks and parking stalls for 210 truck trailers, as well as parking for 380 regular vehicles.

Industrial investor Faropoint bought three warehouse properties in Elk Grove Village, Des Plaines and Addison last month. The purchases, whose prices weren’t disclosed, help the company with its year-end goal to inject $200 million into the Chicago area.

In Maywood, Kroger plans to build an 80,000-square-foot distribution center to help expand the company’s home delivery service in the Chicago area. The new center will rise on a site that once housed a Supreme Catering building at 1900 Maywood Drive.

In suburban Bartlett, Chicago-based Brennan Investment Group plans to build a 118,800-square-foot facility for Zippy Shell, a storage and moving company. The facility will sit on a 7.3 acre industrial parcel in Blue Heron Business Park.

The biggest Chicago-area industrial property sale of 2022 came in April, when a subsidiary of Blackstone, New York-based Link Logistics Real Estate, paid almost $150 million for 12 industrial and office buildings in Waukegan and Zion.

— Victoria Pruitt