JOLIET, IL-Clarius Partners, based in Chicago, is managing thedevelopment of 2.4 million square feet of industrial here at thenew Clarius Park Joliet. On behalf of an unnamed institutionalowner, the company has started construction of the first of fourpossible buildings, a one-million-square-foot speculative warehouseon Youngs Road.

The site is expected to get $70 million worth of buildings on a185-acre site, near the interchange of Interstates 55 and 80.Completion of the first building should be in the first quarter of2013. The other three buildings, between 200,000 square feet to onemillion square feet, will be marketed on a build-to-suit basis,with construction commencing once tenants are found.

Kevin Matzke, managing director of Clarius, tells GlobeSt.comthat there’s tremendous demand for large industrial buildings inJoliet. "There is more than a handful of 750,000-square-foot toone-million-square-foot users searching for space right now in theI-80 corridor,” he says. “It’s not unusual, this market typicallysees about three million square feet of gross absorption each year.There is only one block of space in the market over 750,000 squarecurrently available, but it is second generation space, and we areexpecting that it will be absorbed by the time we finish withconstruction of our new project early next year. There is clearlyroom for one speculative project to come out of the ground in2012.”