CHICAGO- “As Chicago and Milwaukee continue to grow, the logical place for new clusters of development is along I-39,” Eric Voyles tells GlobeSt.com. The newly-appointed executive director of the I-39 Logistics Corridor Association, a business development group based in Rockford, adds that “I-39 is the only north-south interstate near Chicago that is uncongested. If time is money, you'll make more money being located along I-39.”
As the longtime Vice President of National Business Development for the Rockford Area Economic Development Council, Voyles has spent years enticing corporations into the I-39 region, which stretches from Janesville, WI, to Bloomington, IL, about 50 miles west of Chicago. He takes over from Janyce Fadden, who after six years at the helm has decided to move back home to Alabama.
“Janyce is an outstanding executive, one I've enjoyed working with for the past nearly seven years. We plan to continue her marketing initiatives with emphasis on more outreach into the Chicago real estate community,” says Voyles.
“Every interchange [along I-39] has a cluster of business properties and our goal is to make sure everyone understands their quality.” He plans to hold a breakfast meeting this fall, possibly in Rosemont, for Chicago area brokers interested in the approximately 10,000-square-mile region.
He points out that many of the biggest players in Chicago real estate, including CBRE and Jones Lang LaSalle, have been active in the area for years, especially in the industrial market. Yesterday, for example, JLL announced that the developer Venture One Real Estate had picked their firm to exclusively market both Rock 39 Industrial Park and Loves Park Corporate Center. The two parks have a combined 340 acres and shovel-ready sites for build-to-suit facilities of up to 1.5-million-square-feet.
“The combination of a sustainable skilled labor force, low occupancy costs, and access to the upper Midwest population centers positions both of these parks to compete on a total-landed-cost-basis with any other park in the Chicago area,” says Jones Lang LaSalle Managing Director Trevor Ragsdale.
The corridor has attracted a significant amount of industrial development, especially since the official end of the recession. “We're back to being busy like we were in 2006 and 2007,” says Voyles. In March, GlobeSt.com reported that a local partnership bought the Crossroads Commerce Center, a 127-acre industrial site in Rochelle, a town south of Rockford along I-39, from a group of out-of-state-investors. Currently used as farmland, town officials expect the land will eventually host manufacturing companies. Nippon Sharyo just established a giant railcar manufacturing plant less than a mile away, and Rochelle also has two major rail lines and a new Union Pacific Intermodal Facility.
“The workforce that is available along I-39 is exemplary,” Voyles adds, partially due to the long industrial traditions in places like Rockford and Janesville. For example, in Loves Park, just north of Rockford, Woodward Inc., a company founded in Rockford in 1870, broke ground late last year on a $200 million aerospace manufacturing plant which Voyles says will eventually bring in as many as 1,700 jobs.
Landowners have been “gearing up” by putting in infrastructure and getting the proper zoning and documentation. “We're finding that property owners understand the importance of being ready for development.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
