GOOSE ISLAND — A massive distribution center with multiple warehouses under construction near Goose Island is more than halfway complete, the project’s developer said this week.
Logistics Property Company, LLC is building the complex at a former Peoples Gas facility at 1237 W. Division St., just west of the Chicago River.
The company received zoning approval for the project last year and broke ground in October, executive vice president and co-founder Aaron Martell said Tuesday.
The partially completed structure is highly visible from the nearby Kennedy Expressway and along Elston Avenue.
The final building will be five stories high, with two warehouse levels where full-size trucks can drive into the structure to load and unload goods. There are also two mezzanine levels for smaller vehicles and a roof level, according to project plans.
Martell called the structure the Chicago region’s first-ever truly multi-story distribution center.
“The nuance that makes it multi-story and the first of its kind is that trucks can go up to an elevated level, the second floor,” Martell said. “It allows for you to maximize the usage of that site, and then potentially have two different users in the building.”
Logistics Property Company has not yet signed any tenants for the building. But Martell said the site is ideal for companies who may have customers in the neighborhoods directly surrounding the facility, like Bucktown, Lincoln Park, The Loop and others.
“For example, if [the tenant] was a food delivery business, if it was a large grocery company, if it was an e-retailer, if it was consumer products, if it was a home improvement company, all the people that need to be in this close proximity to serve their clients have a need for this type of strategic location,” Martell said.
The building is less than a block from the Kennedy Expressway entrance and exit on Division Street. It joins numerous other industrial sites along the North Branch Industrial Corridor and sits a few blocks south of the Salt Shed music venue.
Martell said construction is expected to be completed by summer 2024. The structure should “start very much looking like a building” by the end of this year, he said.
The distribution center will have a separate five-story parking garage at the southern end of the property, which will include a pedestrian bridge to the second floor of the warehouse facility.
Formerly a gas production site, the property has undergone “substantial environmental remediation,” according to a Department of Planning presentation given last year.
Logistics Property Company is also commissioning several large murals to adorn parts of the facility.
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