In the largest single-property industrial sale seen in the Chicago market in more than five years, Realty Income has paid $124 million to acquire a 910,800-square-foot warehouse facility in University Park, Ill.

The property, located at 23301 S. Central Ave., sits about 35 miles south of the Loop alongside Interstate 57 in Will County.

Fully leased to Central Steel & Wire, the asset was sold to the San Diego-based net-lease REIT by a joint venture of Affinius Capital and Venture One Real Estate.

Seller Venture One has been an active trader in the market: It capped off more than $500 million in Chicago-area industrial portfolio sales in 2023 and 2024.

This specific property was custom-designed to fit the needs of its current tenant. Central Steel & Wire signed a build-to-suit lease at the site in 2021, the same year that the firm sold its longstanding home in Chicago’s Gage Park to Amazon for $45 million.

To find a comparable benchmark for a single industrial asset (excluding data centers and the former Freedom Center printing plant), one needs to go back to that same window in early 2021, when $126.5 million changed hands for a Michelin tire distribution center in Wilmington, Ill.

For buyer Realty Income, the purchase is in line with efforts for expansion. Earlier this year, the REIT entered a partnership with Singapore’s GIC and Houston-based Hines to deploy around $1.5 billion in capital — a massive global push that includes its first moves into Mexico.

Chicago’s industrial market has recorded notable sales volume so far this year. Driven by deals like this, year-to-date sales volume through April reached $1.086 billion, according to Yardi research data. That total ranks Chicago as the fifth-largest industrial market nationally, behind only Dallas, New Jersey, Detroit and Atlanta. Thus far, industrial properties in the metro have traded at an average of $86.75 per square foot, as compared to the national average of $137.81.