Joliet just landed a whopper of an industrial deal, as Northern Builders and investor Affinius Capital have wrapped a long-term lease for a 1.2 million-square-foot industrial building at Cherry Hill Business Park. The massive facility, delivered late last year as a roughly 800,000-square-foot speculative shell, is now slated to grow to about 1.2 million square feet to support temperature-controlled operations. The site is set up for serious logistics, with dozens of dock positions, space for hundreds of trailers and cars, and a 40-foot clear height aimed squarely at cold storage and processing users.
According to REJournals, the redevelopment plan calls for roughly 400,000 square feet of convertible freezer-cooler space and 21,000 square feet of office area, plus 140 equipped docks, 316 off-building trailer stalls, six drive-in doors and 464 car parking stalls. Matthias Trizna, Northern's vice president of development, told the outlet, "We continue to see strong demand for larger-footprint specialized assets in this submarket from users in the cold storage, manufacturing, and processing sectors."
The lease was signed with a tenant whose identity is being kept under wraps for now. The occupier was represented by Adam Mitchell and Matt Carolan of JLL, while Northern Builders was represented by Jason West, Sean Henrick and Ryan Klink of Cushman & Wakefield, as industry outlet Connect CRE reported. The parties plan to retrofit the existing speculative shell into temperature-capable zones that can operate as either freezer or cooler space, depending on how the user ultimately slices up its operations.
Cherry Hill’s Logistics Appeal
Cherry Hill Business Park touts immediate access to I-55, I-57 and I-80, along with direct truck routes and available rail service, features developers say are nonnegotiable for large food and distribution users, per the property listing from Cushman & Wakefield. City records also show a recent dedication of a portion of Spencer Road as public right-of-way to support future warehousing and truck circulation, according to the City of Joliet’s Legistar.
Northern’s Pipeline
Northern has been building aggressively at Cherry Hill. The developer’s project materials highlight a recent 202,813-square-foot build-to-suit for Agile Cold Storage, and the company has delivered or pursued other large speculative and spec-to-suit projects within the park, underscoring its capacity to deliver temperature-capable and rail-served assets. Local coverage and the firm’s own documents point to multiple, overlapping projects at Cherry Hill that together have pushed more than a million square feet of industrial product into the I-80 corridor in recent years.
Neither Northern nor Affinius has disclosed the tenant’s identity or a public move-in timeline. With the conversion to 1.2 million square feet now underway, Joliet’s stretch of I-80 looks poised to stay a heavyweight hub for cold-food logistics and large-scale distribution across the region.
