As Chicago’s industrial sector stabilizes following a pandemic-era boom of activity, data centers are propping up the market, year-end data from Savills shows.
During each of the first three quarters of 2025, less than 10 million square feet of industrial space was under construction in the Chicago area, according to Savills’ report. But during the fourth quarter, that number began to tick up again and landed at 13 million square feet, driven mostly by incoming data center developments.
Those numbers are still far below the construction activity seen during the peak of the pandemic. In the last quarter of 2022, nearly 40 million square feet of industrial space was under construction in the Chicago area, according to Savills.
As work-from-home policies caused office demand to plummet, industrial development became a safe haven for investors. Chicago is particularly well-suited to such projects because of its extensive rail network and access to freshwater.
Still, that level of activity has tapered off in recent years since the pandemic.
Industrial asking rents rose 2.1 percent in 2025, year-over-year, to $7.94 per square foot, but with concessions factored in, net effective rent stayed roughly the same compared to 2024 in much of the Chicago area.
Net absorption improved significantly last year, indicating that the region’s supply is doing a better job matching demand from tenants. By the end of 2024, about 400,000 more square feet of space was leased than vacated. In the last quarter of 2025, that figure jumped up to 7.3 million square feet.
Buyers are still interested in the market too. The highest dollar sale in Cook County last year was NorthPoint Development’s purchase of a $270 million industrial portfolio in the Northwest suburbs to NorthPoint Development, a TRD data analysis found. The seller was Massachusetts-based seller High Street Logistics.
It was the only sale that came in over $200 million last year.