The massive 1,500-acre RidgePort Logistics Center — a rail-served industrial park within the Will County Inland Port — is continuing to take shape, with infrastructure and site work now fully underway.
This fully entitled, shovel-ready park is located along Interstate 55 at Lorenzo Road in Wilmington, just three miles south of the new interchange servicing the largest inland container yards in the United States, nine miles south of the I-55/ I-80 interchange and 40 miles southwest of downtown Chicago.
The park is master-planned to include more than 20 million square feet of distribution and manufacturing space in buildings ranging in size from 200,000 to 2.5 million square feet. It is being developed by Chicago-based Ridge Property Trust and marketed by commercial real estate brokerage firm Jones Lang LaSalle.
In recent weeks, construction crews have completed the extension of the sewer and water main from the existing Wilmington municipal facilities. Construction of the 1 million gallon water tower that will service the park is more than 75 percent complete. Water is being sourced from the Kankakee River, which is radium free and meets the no-treatment requirement for food sanitation operations. The city also has a new sanitary sewer plant that is being expanded to allow for a capacity of 4 million gallons per day.
In addition, the signalization and rail connection to the BNSF Railway’s TransContinental mainline has also been completed allowing users located in the park direct rail access to buildings and land sites.
“With this work now completed and with several other projects soon to get under way, RidgePort Logistics Center is truly a shovel-ready project,” said Keith Stauber, SIOR, regional managing director who is marketing the development along with Jones Lang LaSalle colleagues Dominic Carbonari, SIOR, Steve Ostrowski and JLL’s Ports, Airport and Global Infrastructure team of John Carver and Rohan a’Beckett.
Other projects scheduled for this summer at the site include the widening of Lorenzo Road from two lanes to five lanes from the existing Lorenzo Road interchange to the park entrance, the main entrance to the park off of Lorenzo Road, along with internal roads and the mass grading of Phase I of the Park. Phase I includes the pad for the first speculative building planned for the Park, Building B, which can be as large as 1 million square feet.
In addition to being rail-served by the BNSF mainline, the Park is also strategically positioned near the BNSF Logistics Park-Chicago in Elwood and the Union Pacific-Joliet Intermodal Terminal in Joliet, three miles to the new four-way interchange serving both. Together, these two intermodals constitute the largest inland container port in the United States, positioning RidgePort Logistics Center clients to take advantage of local, national and international trade routes originating in the Far East via the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
“We know we have the perfect location,” said James Martell, CEO of Ridge Property Trust. “We’re looking forward to serving the needs of global customers in this vital transportation area.”