Ares Buys Blackstone Out of Joliet Amazon Warehouse

An industrial property in the Chicago suburbs traded hands between two of real estate’s biggest power players this month.

Los Angeles-based Ares Management bought a Joliet distribution center, which is leased by tech giant Amazon, from New York-based Blackstone this month, Will County records show.

The distribution center at 401 East Laraway Road, is likely worth more than the $49 million price tag that it traded for this month because Ares already had a limited interest in the property.

Singapore-based GLP Capital Partners previously owned the distribution center and sold a controlling interest in it to Blackstone in 2019 for $41 million, while maintaining a limited interest in the property, mortgage records show.

Ares acquired all of GLP’s operations outside of China in 2025, a press release said.

Representatives of Ares declined to comment about the Joliet purchase. But the firm likely saw potential in hanging onto the asset, as Amazon is a coveted tenant of industrial properties for landlords and municipalities alike.

Plus, Ares has been a consistent buyer of large industrial properties in both Chicagoland and other major markets over the past year. In 2025, the firm paid a combined $104 million for two properties in Aurora, which is Illinois’ second-largest city and sits about 37 miles west of Chicago. Elsewhere, Ares last year paid Blackstone and its subsidiary Link Logistics $121 million for a South Florida industrial portfolio, and in September, Ares bought 1.6 million square feet of industrial real estate in the Fort Worth area of Texas.

Chicago’s suburbs benefitted from a boom in industrial investment during the pandemic that has shown signs of stabilizing in recent years.

By the end of 2024, about 4.8 million 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, according to a year-end report from Savills.

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.