Scott Sachtleben is targeting Carptersville for his firm’s addition to Chicagoland’s surging pipeline of industrial projects, and facing local pushback to its vision.
Missouri-based U.S. Capital Development, whose CEO is Sachtleben, wants to build a 1 million-square-foot logistics campus across 90 acres at the southeast corner of Randall and Binnie roads in the northwest suburb, the Daily Herald reported.
Carpentersville officials last month discussed the plan, which would include three buildings and hasn’t yet been formally submitted to the village as a development request. More than 200 residents attended that meeting between village trustees and zoning leaders, and the proposal’s potential impacts on local traffic and environmental quality has concerned some.
As industrial construction projects have been stuffed into the Chicago-area’s pipeline at the fastest pace ever this year to meet soaring demand for warehousing amid the pandemic, opposition to select projects has cropped up, as well.
The 17.2 million square feet of industrial buildings across 48 projects in the Chicago area that started construction in the third quarter set a new record, breaking the previous all-time-high of 13.1 million square feet set in the second quarter of 2020. Demand for larger buildings has driven the development rush, with vacancy of just 2.6 percent in spaces 200,000 square feet or larger setting a record low in the area earlier this year.
Almost all of the new construction projects were started on speculation, demonstrating developers’ confidence that demand will support profitable returns, even as vacancies in the area ticked up for the first time in nearly three years this summer.
The craze to satisfy the industrial demand hasn’t been without its challenges, ensuring U.S. Capital isn’t alone in battling concerns to gain approval to get a project forward.
In Joliet, a second lawsuit was filed by Oak Brook’s CenterPoint Properties against the city council in August over the local municipality’s denial of a plan to build a new industrial facility near the Interstate 55 and Interstate 80 interchange. And Arizona-based Diversified Partners is in the process of annexing property into a new southern suburb, Hazel Crest, after formally splitting off from neighborhoring Homewood over its rejection of a plan to redevelop the Calumet Country Club into an 800,000-square-foot warehouse facility.
While U.S. Capital still needs to come forward with a full Carptersville development application, the village last month conceived a zoning designation that would allow for a select number of industrial uses along the Randall Road corridor. The new category, however, has not yet been applied to any property in the city, and no other applications have been submitted requesting the zoning.
— Sam Lounsberry
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