CHICAGO—The Chicago region's industrial market has been having a great few years, with long lines of potential tenants looking for new class A spaces, especially distribution facilities larger than 300,000 square feet. And in 2017 this big box sector will face a challenge, according to Colliers International | Chicago's new third quarter Industrial Big Box Report.

“There is a significant amount of speculative construction that is going to be delivered over the next two quarters,” Matthew Stauber, principal, tells GlobeSt.com. “If you are currently looking for 750,000 square feet in the Chicago area it does not exist, but it will very soon, and that will have a very interesting impact on the market.”

Developers will watch carefully to see how much interest the pending big box projects generate, and how quickly tenants agree to occupy them. A total of eight big box construction projects were started during the third quarter, Colliers found, bringing the total ongoing projects to 21. Developers currently have 13.3 million square feet of big box construction projects underway in the market, of which 11 projects, representing 42.8% of the ongoing construction activity, have been launched on a speculative basis.