A half-empty industrial behemoth in Montgomery just traded hands for about $30 million, as TradeLane Properties grabbed a roughly 584,000-square-foot warehouse at 2001 Baseline Road and lined up a round of light renovations and electrical upgrades aimed at luring logistics and food-grade tenants. The deal flips a long-running listing into an owner-operated, value-add play focused on re-leasing the big chunk of space that is still sitting idle.
According to the Chicago Business Journal, the building was roughly 49% leased at the time of sale, with TradeLane planning modest work to bring the property up to current market standards, including the electrical upgrades. Brokers familiar with the transaction told the outlet the purchase price was about $30 million.
Building Details and Vacancy
Marketing materials peg the property at approximately 584,301 square feet with about 295,620 square feet available for lease, leaving roughly half the building on the market, according to CREXi. A brochure from Cushman & Wakefield highlights a 30-foot clear height and multiple dock-high doors, features that tend to play well with distribution and food-grade users. Brokers are pitching the space with short-term lease flexibility while TradeLane weighs which upgrades will give it the most bang for its buck.
How It Fits Chicago's Industrial Market
Chicago's industrial sector has held up in early 2026, with availability hovering near 8.6% in the first quarter even as leasing activity and rents continued to climb, according to figures from CBRE. Local commentary from JLL points to steady demand for modernized big-box space, even as a fresh wave of construction adds new product to the pipeline. That mix creates room for investors willing to move quickly on older buildings, clean them up, and refill them.
TradeLane's Strategy
TradeLane has been busy around Chicagoland. The firm bought two manufacturing properties in Alsip in 2025 and started renovating one of them, a pattern first reported by the Chicago Business Journal. The Montgomery pickup lines up with that same value-add playbook, in which TradeLane acquires under-utilized assets, makes targeted improvements, and then re-leases the space to higher-paying or shorter-term users.
Brokers have the Baseline Road property posted on commercial listing platforms, and TradeLane is expected to kick off its promised light renovations as it markets the open space, per the LoopNet listing. The coming months will show whether upgraded power and modest repairs are enough to fill a half-empty box in a market that still leans hard toward modern, high-power facilities.
