Realty Income has paid $124 million for a huge warehouse south of Chicago, the area’s biggest industrial property sale in more than five years.
The investment trust last week bought the 910,800-square-foot warehouse at 23301 S. Central Ave. in University Park, Illinois, according to Will County property records.
It is fully leased to Central Steel & Wire, a metal fabricator and distributor.
Not including data centers or the former Freedom Center printing-plant facility in Chicago, which is now being redeveloped into a Bally’s casino complex, the University Park deal is the largest single-property industrial sale in the area in more than five years. The last deal larger than that was the $126.5 million sale of a massive Michelin tire distribution center in Wilmington, Illinois, in February 2021, according to CoStar data.
The Central Steel & Wire facility is about 35 miles south of Chicago’s Loop business district, along Interstate 57 and other industrial buildings that include an Amazon fulfillment center.
Central Steel & Wire parent company Ryerson Holding Corp. struck a build-to-suit deal for a processing and distribution center on the University Park site in 2021.
The agreement came after selling Central Steel & Wire’s longtime home on the Southwest Side of Chicago to Amazon. The e-commerce giant in recent years has been working on plans to demolish the former steel plant and replace it with a distribution center.
Realty Income bought the University Park property from a venture of San Antonio-based Affinius Capital and local developer Venture One Real Estate.
Venture One declined to comment. Realty Income and Affinius Capital did not respond to requests for comment from CoStar News.
Held back by higher borrowing costs and more selective underwriting by investors, total industrial property sales volume over the past year in the Chicago area has totaled $4.3 billion, down about 10% from the previous year, according to CoStar data.
San Diego-based Realty Income is one of the nation’s largest net-lease real estate investment trusts, financing real estate sectors such as retail, industrial and gaming.
Late last year, the company agreed to make an $800 million preferred equity investment in Blackstone’s Aria Resort & Casino and Vdara Hotel & Spa as part of a multibillion-dollar refinancing on the Las Vegas Strip.
Early this year, Realty Income said it was forming a strategic partnership with Singapore-based GIC and Houston-based Hines as part of plans to deploy more than $1.5 billion including its entry into Mexico.