Special Insert Page 27
©2026 Real Estate Publishing Corporation July • VOL.26 NO.3
Small Parcels, Big Demand: How O’Hare keeps outperforming Chicago’s industrial market By Brandi Smith
3080 Bilter Rd. Courtesy High Street Logistics Properties
M
ost of the land around O’Hare International Airport comes in parcels too small to hold a big-box warehouse. That single constraint, more than any interest-rate move or shift in the cycle, explains why the O’Hare industrial submarket continues to defy a national slowdown that has left vacant space piling up across many of the country’s outer logistics corridors. While big-box submarkets on the metro’s edges have softened, O’Hare has stayed full. Vacancy across the broader Chicago suburban industrial market has drifted toward 8.5% to 9%, according to Dustin Albers, Senior Vice
President at Lee & Associates of Illinois. In the O’Hare submarket, he said, it sits closer to 5.4% to 5.5% and the gap has held even as demand for the metro’s largest blocks has thinned. What makes the submarket central also makes it nearly impossible to overbuild. Most lots near the airport sit under five acres, capping what any developer can deliver and keeping new supply from catching up to demand. Air freight users, pharmaceutical shippers, time-sensitive logistics operators and last-mile distributors all compete for the same narrow footprint, said Al Caruana, Executive
Managing Director at Cushman & Wakefield. The result is a market that turns over in small pieces. The geography that puts O’Hare at the center of the map is the same thing that keeps it scarce. “It’s mostly mid- and small bay-industrial product that goes quick around O’Hare, the 10,000-to-40,000-squarefoot spaces are hot right now,” Caruana said. “We’ll never have a million square footer at O’Hare.” INDUSTRIAL (continued on page 10)