CIP MARKETPLACE (pg.14): CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES/GENERAL CONTRACTORS COMMERCIAL LENDING REAL ESTATE LAW FIRMS
VOL.36 NO.4
THE LEADING NEWS SOURCE FOR INDUSTRIAL REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONALS & USERS
JULY 2026
Record Rent, a Demand Reversal and a New Model for the West Side: Chicago industrial at mid-year
The Cubes at Roosevelt & Kostner - Building A
By Brandi Smith
C
hicago's industrial market crossed a threshold in the second quarter that it had never touched before. Average asking net rents topped $8 per square foot for the first time in the market's history, according to Adam Haefner, Managing Director at JLL, and also tallied roughly 25 million square feet of firsthalf leasing activity, above-average velocity by any measure. But Chicago has never been a one-story market. Ask a leasing broker, a tenant advisor, a developer, a capital markets specialist, a global landlord, a value investor
and a supply chain strategist to describe the same six months and you get seven distinct answers, each one true and each one incomplete on its own. Here is the view from every seat. The leasing floor: a reversal worth watching Ben Dickey, Vice President at Stream Realty Partners, describes a healthy market whose biggest first-half surprise ran against type: small-bay infill product, historically the most resilient corner of Chicago industrial, trailed the big-box segment on net-new demand.
Major retailers and third-party logistics firms are absorbing bulk space again, while no single industry has stepped up to drive smaller infill deals. The divide runs deeper than leasing velocity. “Class A product continues to see increases in rent on new leasing from tenants who place a premium on quality location and building functionality, while Class INDUSTRIAL (continued on page 10)