With the economy on the rebound and consumers still shopping online, industrial tenants set a record last year for mega warehouse leases, and the Chicago market that includes Kenosha County was the hottest for industrial leases of a million square feet or more.

Last year in the U.S., companies agreed to 57 leases for industrial properties that size, marking a 19% increase from 2020, according to CBRE Group Inc.

Twelve of those were in Chicago, comprising 12 million square feet. It is unlikely any leases over 1 million square feet were in Kenosha County, where the biggest leases of 2021 included 472,176 square feet for Visual Pak Cos. in Bristol. Amazon.com has been responsible for some of southeast Wisconsin’s biggest industrial leases since 2020, including almost 750,000 square feet in Kenosha that was made public in early 2020.

Ranking behind the Windy City were Pennsylvania’s I-78/81 Corridor, with 11 deals totaling 12.4 million square feet, and Southern California’s Inland Empire, with 10 transactions totaling 10.2 million square feet.

“The Chicago market continues to surprise us with incredible activity that hasn’t slowed down in the last 36 months,” said Matt Mulvihill, a vice chairman in CBRE’s Chicago office. “Demand for new construction is at an all-time high and it can’t come fast enough to keep up with user activity. The market is experiencing record low vacancy rates resulting increased rents in every submarket across Chicagoland. Strategic submarkets including O’Hare are below 2% vacancy, indicating this momentum will only continue in 2022.”

Read more at the Milwaukee Business Journal.