Realty Income Scoops up Chicagoland Industrial Center

Realty Income is the taker in the largest industrial single-property sale in Chicagoland in the past five years that doesn’t involve a data center.

San Diego-based Realty Income bought the warehouse at 23301 South Central Avenue in University Park for $124 million. The property is 910,800 square feet, and the transaction is the largest industrial sector sale in more than five years, according to CoStar. The last deal to eclipse it was five years ago: a $126.5 million purchase of a Michelin tire distribution center in Wilmington, according to the outlet.

The property was formerly owned by San Antonio-based Affinius Capital and Rosemont, Illinois-based Venture One Real Estate. It is fully leased by Central Steel & Wire, who sold their 70-acre, 1.5 million-square-foot Gage Park home base to Amazon in 2021 for $45 million. That same year, Central Steel & Wire nailed down a build-to-suit deal to create a processing and distribution center at the 23301 South Central Avenue location.

Earlier in 2026, Realty Income said it was entering a strategic partnership with Singaporean company GIC and Houston-based Hines to deploy $1.5 billion in capital, including a move to take the company into Mexico.

Venture One appears to be in the process of completing a multi-year transformation offloading its industrial holdings as confidence returns to that sector in the Chicago property market. Two months ago, the company scored a deal worth over $200 million for the sale of a 32-property portfolio.

The buyers of that portfolio were New York-based private equity firm DRA Advisors. Between 2022 and 2024, property records showed that Venture One assembled the 32 properties sold for around $150 million. In 2023, they scored an even bigger transaction with DRA Advisors: a 2.8 million square-feet, $369 million deal for 54 properties that boasted at least 40 in the Chicago area.

— Hunter Cooke