CHICAGO—Hillwood Investment Properties, a Perot company, has just acquired 49 acres of land at Laraway Crossings Business Park from Ryan Companies, Inc. in the I-80 submarket of Chicago in Joliet, its second land acquisition in the Chicago industrial market in the past 45 days. The company plans to break ground on a class A distribution center totaling 746,772 square feet later this month and complete it by mid-year 2016.

“We believe the timing is very good for a building of this size,” Don Schoenheider, Hillwood senior vice president and market leader for the Midwest, tells GlobeSt.com. “There is only one other building in the area with more than 700,000 square feet, and it's not really in the I-80 submarket.” It's more than likely that Hillwood will lease the big building to just one tenant, although the space can be split between several.

The Dallas-based company has quickly ramped up to become one of the region's major industrial developers. In the next 30 to 45 days, it will have about 1.15 million square feet of space under construction, Schoenheider adds. As reported in GlobeSt.com, the company opened a Chicago-based office earlier this year, and recently acquired 39 acres at Pinnacle Business Park in suburban Romeoville where it plans to build four class A industrial buildings totaling 638,110 square feet.

Furthermore, last year Hillwood purchased about 1.4 million square feet of industrial space located throughout Joliet and Bolingbrook in the I-55 submarket, Central DuPage County and the Elgin area. And this summer it acquired three class A industrial properties in southwest suburban Tinley Park totaling 170,000 square feet.

One of the key selling points of the new Joliet project is the building's 36' clear height. “There have been a couple of these built and we think that this is going to be standard going forward,” Schoenheider says, especially for consumer products, e-commerce and food service firms. The building will also offer modern amenities such as 76 exterior docks, 72 trailer parking stalls, 154 car parking spaces, and ample column spacing of 56' by 49' with availability to expand.

“We're enthusiastic about the next couple of years for new development,” Schoenheider says. He points out that positive net absorption in the region is outpacing new construction.

According to Colliers International, “tremendous user demand during the second quarter resulted in 8.1 million square feet of net absorption, a staggering increase from the 1.3 million square feet reported in the first quarter.” And “the Chicago area industrial market witnessed 6.1 million square feet of construction deliveries in the second quarter which was more than four times greater than the 1.8 million square feet reported in the prior quarter.”

It's possible that the market could handle more industrial development, Schoenheider adds. Still, “finding good land sites continues to be difficult” and “building spec is still more difficult than it was. Everybody remembers what happened eight years ago and wants to be a little smarter.”