There are still deals to be made as Chicago’s industrial market quiets down from a pandemic-era boom.
Houston-based Hines last week bought a distribution center at 555 Saint James Gate in suburban Bolingbrook for $29.5 million or about $73 per square foot.
Seller TradeLane Properties had bought the 404,000 square foot facility in 2021 for $24.6 million.
Representatives of Hines and TradeLane did not return requests for comment.
TradeLane also offloaded an Aurora logistics center in May for $58 million. A venture of TradeLane Partners and Phelan Development took out a $26 million construction mortgage in 2023 to fund the development, although it’s unclear how much the project cost.
Los Angeles-based Ares Management bought the 356,000 square foot property in a deal that worked out to $220 per square foot.
Speculative industrial development in the suburbs peaked in the third quarter of 2023 when nearly 12 million square feet of space entered the market. That figure fell to 1.4 million in the first quarter, according to JLL.
The vacancy rate in Chicago was 5.5 percent in the second quarter, an increase of four basis points quarter-over-quarter, according to CBRE.
As deliveries slow, industrial landlords are finding tenants.
Leasing activity rose to 8.4 million square feet in the second quarter, up from 6.2 million during the same quarter last year, CBRE found.
The most notable industrial transactions in the Chicago area have been driven by growth in AI and data centers are generating big-ticket sales.In one of the biggest commercial sales of last year, Australian firm HMC Capital bought a warehouse in Elk Grove Village from Prologis for $440 million, with another $272 million on the line for the seller’s work to convert it into a data center.