When RJW Logistics needed 1.2 million square feet, Karis already owned the land.
In April 2026, RJW Logistics Group, a national retail consolidation logistics provider that has committed to 6.7 million square feet of new Chicago-area space in under two years, signed a 10-year lease for a 1.2 million square foot, 42-foot clear, Class A cross-dock build-to-suit at Karis Park West in Montgomery, Illinois. Colliers ranked it the largest new industrial lease in the Chicago market in the first quarter of 2026. Construction started the same month. Delivery is scheduled for 2027.
That speed was not luck. It is how Karis develops.
We buy great land before there is a tenant. Karis Park West is 200 acres on the Orchard Road corridor between I-88 and Route 30, BNSF rail-accessible, in Chicago's supply-constrained western suburbs. We bought it with our own capital, years before any tenant was looking, and we were prepared to wait for the right one. We do not chase developer-controlled land at retail prices to make a few dollars on the building. We buy the sites tenants will eventually have to have.
We do the hard part first. Annexation, zoning, utilities, incentives, rail and mass grading, all completed in partnership with the Village of Montgomery before a lease existed. Site work began in October 2023. By the time RJW's requirement surfaced, the only work left was designing and building the building.
Every Karis site is planned as a speculative building, so a build-to-suit moves at spec speed. RJW's schedule started at building design, not at a zoning hearing. That is worth months to a tenant, and months decide where a 1.2 million square foot operation lands.
We have done this before, on this exact site. RJW is the second building Karis has delivered at Karis Park West. The first was a 500,000 square foot rail-served facility for Ravago, a global polymer distributor, on the same utilities, approvals and jurisdiction. The same approach produced two last-mile delivery stations for a global Fortune 100 e-commerce company on infill sites in Chicago and Denver, both sold to institutional buyers within months of delivery, and a cold storage build-to-suit for FreezPak Logistics in Suffolk, Virginia. Different tenants, different states, different product types. Same playbook: control a great site, get it ready, and be there when the requirement arrives.
1.2 million square feet, 42-foot clear, Class A cross-dock on 73 acres, ranked by Colliers as the largest new industrial lease in the Chicago market in the first quarter of 2026.
Because the land was owned, annexed, zoned, incentivized and graded in advance, RJW went from lease signature to construction in April 2026. Delivery in 2027.
BNSF rail-accessible, M-2 zoning, Village of Montgomery incentives in place, on the Orchard Road corridor between I-88 and Route 30.
Ravago's 500,000 square foot rail-served facility was the park's first building. RJW is the second, on the same utilities, approvals and jurisdiction. Repeat delivery is the proof that the site, the entitlements and the developer all work.
Karis has completed or has underway more than $2 billion in industrial, cold storage and powered land projects since 2014, with institutional partners including the Florida State Board of Administration and AEW, and invests its own capital in every project.
Have a build-to-suit requirement of 200,000 square feet or more? Send the market, size and timeline to
info@karis.com and we will tell you whether we already have the site.
