Joliet’s warehouse wars on hold as city celebrates new cold-storage facility

Joliet officials and a state senator who has spoken out against warehouse development joined a groundbreaking celebration Thursday for the latest distribution center in the city.

Arcadia Cold Storage & Logistics is building a 293,000-square-foot facility that the company’s CEO said will help supply the growing grocery market for cold and frozen foods.

The project is underway on Millsdale Road on land east of Illinois Route 53, an area that the City Council once considered placing under a warehouse development moratorium because of public outcry against growing truck traffic on Route 53.

But Joliet Economic Development Director Paulina Martinez and Councilman Cesar Cardenas joined the groundbreaking to welcome the Arcadia project.

Martinez was among featured speakers at the ceremony and said she was standing in for Mayor Terry D’Arcy who could not be at the event.

The Aracadia facility, she said, “symbolizes a tremendous investment in our city, our workforce and our future.”

Also speaking in support of the project was Jessica Wimbley, chief of staff for state Sen. Rachel Ventura, D-Joliet.

Ventura has been an outspoken critic of NorthPoint Development’s plans for warehouse development in a massive industrial park that would stretch from Joliet to Elwood. The Arcadia project is not part of the NorthPoint development.

Wimbley, who said she was speaking on behalf of Ventura who was in Springfield, thanked Arcadia “for choosing Joliet for your expansion.”

Arcadia, an Atlanta-based company formed in 2022, is expanding rapidly.

“Roughly 75% of the buildings that exist today – cold storage buildings – are over 40 years old. There’s a need to replace those facilities in the coming years.”

—  Chris Hughes, Arcadia co-founder and CEO

Its growth is an example of the larger market forces driving warehouse development in and around Joliet: a demand for new distribution centers to move goods amid changing market conditions.

Arcadia Co-Founder and CEO Chris Hughes pointed to the growing space in supermarkets devoted to cold and frozen foods.

The rapidly expanding company moves those foods along to local supermarkets. Hughes said there is a need for modern cold storage facilities.

“Roughly 75% of the buildings that exist today – cold storage buildings – are over 40 years old," Hughes said. “There’s a need to replace those facilities in the coming years.”

At the same time that Arcadia is building the Joliet facility, it is building another cold-storage warehouse in Crown Point, Indiana.

Both the Joliet and Crown Point facilities are slated to open in the first quarter of 2026.

Arcadia has put nine facilities under constructions since the company was started three years ago and has six in operation now.

“The goal is to have 20 to 25 of these buildings when we are done,” Hughes said.

The Joliet facility will employ at least 75 workers, although the number could rise to 100, Hughes said.

General contractor Clayco began work on the site in September.

Visitors to the site will notice an improved Millsdale Road, which previously was a country road east of Illinois Rt. 53 and now is newly paved with curbs.

The future Arcadia facility is being built just north of other warehouses developed in recent years on the other side of Millsdale Road in the Joliet Logistics Park.

Millsdale has become a battleground road in the ongoing conflict over the NorthPoint project. NorthPoint has built its first warehouses along a section of Millsdale running west of Rt. 53.

But there was no mention of NorthPoint or the local warehouse issues at the Arcadia groundbreaking celebration.

“We do still want to attract business to Joliet,” Wimbley said when asked afterwards about Ventura’s support for the project. “We do still want to attract industry.”

Cardenas, the councilman who chairs Land Use and Economic Development Committee, said he still is getting a grasp on the city’s warehouse issues, noting the need to balance concerns about the city’s expanding logistics economy with the potential warehouses provide for jobs and development.

“Although I don’t agree with many of the ways that they’ve come to fruition,” he said, “you want to work together with the residents and the builders and the companies to find the best way to continue to grow.”

.