“It’s a big hassle to deal with just to survive because you’re not making a lot of money,” he said.
The coronavirus pandemic has hurt many industries but it also has fueled growth in the Chicago area in distribution and logistics, a sector often located near expressways but not public transit.
“The rebound is in manufacturing, transportation, warehousing, utilities,” said Karin Norington-Reaves, CEO of the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership. “A lot of that is from e-commerce.”
The rise of online shopping has meant a boom in industrial real estate, particularly along the Interstate 80 and Interstate 55 corridors. Will County grew its warehouse footprint by 50% during the past decade and accounted for some of the biggest job growth in the region outside of Chicago’s Loop. Since 2010, the seven-county Chicago area has added 367 warehouses and distribution facilities, with more than 100 million square feet of rentable space, according to CoStar data provided by CMAP.
Amazon is driving a lot of the growth. The Seattle-based e-commerce giant, which employs 23,000 people in Illinois, next year plans to open fulfillment centers in Markham and Matteson that each will employ 1,000 people.
Romeoville, a logistics and distribution hub on the I-55 subcorridor, has grown from about 7,000 jobs in 2004 to 24,500 jobs today, including more than 1,800 who work at the Amazon fulfillment center, its biggest employer.
