JOLIET, IL-Clarius Partners, based in Chicago, is managing the development of 2.4 million square feet of industrial here at the new Clarius Park Joliet. On behalf of an unnamed institutional owner, the company has started construction of the first of four possible buildings, a one-million-square-foot speculative warehouse on Youngs Road.

The site is expected to get $70 million worth of buildings on a 185-acre site, near the interchange of Interstates 55 and 80. Completion of the first building should be in the first quarter of 2013. The other three buildings, between 200,000 square feet to one million 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.com that there’s tremendous demand for large industrial buildings in Joliet. "There is more than a handful of 750,000-square-foot to one-million-square-foot users searching for space right now in the I-80 corridor,” he says. “It’s not unusual, this market typically sees about three million square feet of gross absorption each year. There is only one block of space in the market over 750,000 square currently available, but it is second generation space, and we are expecting that it will be absorbed by the time we finish with construction of our new project early next year. There is clearly room for one speculative project to come out of the ground in 2012.”