Tenant demand for industrial space in the Chicago market jumped significantly in the first quarter of the year. That’s the good news from JLL‘s first quarter Chicago Industrial Insights report.
According to JLL’s report, industrial leasing activity rose to 8.1 million square feet in the Chicago-area market in the first quarter of 2025. That’s up from 5.5 million square feet of industrial leases in this market in the fourth quarter of last year. It’s also up solidly from the industrial lease volume of 7.2 million square feet in the Chicago market a year earlier.
Boosting industrial leasing activity in the first quarter of the year was RJW Logistics Group’s 977,000-square-foot lease from CenterPoint Properties in the Interestate-80 corridor. Uline also closed a big industrial deal in the first quarter, leasing two spaces in the Southeast Wisconsin market and growing its occupancy here by 1 million square feet.
3PL occupiers accounted for the highest leasing volume in the first quarter of this year, 1.7 million square feet or 21% of all industrial leasing activity in the Chicago market during the first three months of 2025.
Another big trend, according to JLL? The Chicago-area industrial sector delivered just 3.8 million square feet of new product during the first quarter. That is well below the average of 5.9 million square feet for this market.
Owner-built/build-to-suit deliveries accounted for 62% of the new industrial product delivered in the market during the first quarter, while speculative deliveries of 1.4 million square feet accounted for just 38%.
Rent growth was mostly flat, with the average industrial rent in the Chicago-area market standing at $7.55 a square foot. That is nearly unchanged from the average rent of $7.54 a square foot in the fourth quarter of 2024. Average industrial rents here a year ago were $7.06 a square foot.
The Chicago North, Northwest Cook County O’Hare and West Cook County submarkets all commanded average asking rents north of $10 a square foot in the first quarter, while the Interstate-39 corridor and Rockford submarkets reported average asking rents below $5 a square foot, JLL reported.
