Chicago Needs Even More Spec Construction

In the largest lease of the quarter, Reviva Logistics took this entire 718,709 square foot building in Monee, IL.

CHICAGO—As reported last week in GlobeSt.com, the Chicago industrial market has gotten off to a fast start this year, with developers having broken ground on nearly three million square feet of new space by the end of the first quarter, the vast majority of it for speculative projects, the largest amount of spec space seen in a first quarter for more than two decades.     

But even with this burst of activity, CBRE officials say that a significant portion of the demand from users is going unmet. The metro area’s availability rate keeps declining and ended the first quarter at just 6.6%. There was 1.1 million square feet of positive absorption in the first quarter.