Ridge REIT Pencils $1.6B Business Park

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WILL COUNTY, IL-A business park is being developed in unincorporated Will County, near the city of Wilmington, by a partnership between Ridge Property Trust, based in Chicago, and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co., with corporate headquarters in Fort Worth. RidgePort Logistics Center-Chicago will be located at the intersection of Interstate 55 and Lorenzo Road and will consist of between 2,000 acres and 3,000 acres, says Doug Hayes, vice president with the REIT. The value of the 15-year project is more than $1.6 billion, which “is just our part of it. It does not include the railroad’s end of it because they are still up in the air with their plans,” Hayes says.

The business center will have more than 20 million sf of industrial space when fully built. The park will have both speculative buildings and build to suit facilities. Ridge hopes to begin construction by late summer on the first building for the park, which will be a spec facility with slightly more than one million sf. The building is expected to be completed by summer or fall of next year. Hayes said he could not release asking lease rates, but the average rate for warehouse use is $3.84 per sf, according to a Grubb & Ellis Q1 report. The business center will have rail-served buildings. The railroad is “beginning work on their main line that goes through there and are looking to put more tracks into their current right of way,” Hayes says.