April 30, 2024
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Joliet council to vote on another Route 53 warehouse

Arcadia Cold Storage seeks site near Millsdale Road

By Bob Okon
Concrete drainage pipes sit in a muddy field Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016 as construction continues on a warehouse spanning nearly 1 million square feet in Joliet.

Warehouse construction has been an issue in Joliet since at least eight years when this project, seen in a file photo, was under construction along Route 53. (Eric Ginnard)

Joliet has another warehouse question to resolve.

The City Council will vote Tuesday whether to approve a plat for construction of a 295,000-square-foot Arcadia Cold Storage facility.

The council’s hands may be tied by past approval of industrial zoning for the 27-acre site in the Joliet Logistics Park at Route 53 and Millsdale Road.

But council member Suzanna Ibarra voiced concern about another warehouse going into the Route 53 corridor on the south end of Joliet that is in her District 5.

“My constituents are disgusted with the amount of truck traffic,” Ibarra said at a council workshop meeting on Monday.

Councilwoman Suzanna Ibarra has a conversation before the start of the Joliet City Council meeting on Tuesday, July 18th, 2023.

Councilwoman Suzanna Ibarra (Gary Middendorf – gmiddendorf@shawmedia/Gary Middendorf)

A traffic engineer with the developer said the project is expected to generate a peak of nine trucks an hour in the morning and 274 trucks over the course of a week.

The Arcadia Cold Storage facility would employ between 60 and 90 full-time workers being paid between $40,000-plus to $180,000, Brandon Alviano, development manager with Saxum Real Estate, told the council.

Joliet Logistics Park is on the east side of Route 53, an area where the City Council once said it would bar warehouse development unless new projects connected to a so-called “closed loop” that NorthPoint Development plans to create. The NorthPoint plan is to build a bridge over Route 53 to keep trucks off the highway as they move between warehouses and the intermodal yards in Joliet and Elwood. But no bridge has been built.

The council two years ago lifted its unofficial closed-loop moratorium for the Joliet Logistics Park to allow construction of a warehouse with a condition that it be connected to the future closed loop by June 2025.

Ibarra noted the closed-loop issue when questioning whether the city should allow another warehouse in the Joliet Logistics Park.

The one warehouse built in the Joliet Logistics Park seen from the other side of Route 53 at Millsdale Road on Oct. 22, 2023.

A warehouse seen in the background in this file photo is part the Joliet Logistics Park located east of Route 53 at Millsdale Road. (Bob Okon)

Mayor Terry D’Arcy acknowledged the potential location problem.

“This is the east side of (Route) 53 and something we have a real problem with,” D’Arcy said.

But he said the city could face litigation if it tried to block warehouse development in an area already zoned industrial.

The council approved industrial zoning for the site in 2007, interim City Attorney Chris Regis said.

The city continues to look for ways to get a handle on warehouse development in that sector of Joliet.

A proposed one-year moratorium on industrial zoning in an area south of Interstate 80 and east of Route 53 to Briggs Street was to go to the council’s Land Use and Legislative Committee for consideration last week but was pulled off the agenda before the meeting and is expected to be revised.

The moratorium would not have had an impact on the Arcadia Cold Storage plan since the site already has industrial zoning.