Aermec North America Manufacturing Facility, DeKalb, Illinois

The Aermec North America manufacturing facility in DeKalb, Illinois, is a 189,680-square-foot build-to-suit that will pull the Italian HVAC maker’s U.S. manufacturing, warehousing, distribution and corporate offices into one building. It’ll also be Aermec’s new U.S. headquarters. Venture One Real Estate is the developer, Meridian Design Build is general contractor and Ware Malcomb is the architect. Construction is underway, with completion expected in the third quarter of 2027.

Aermec builds chillers and heat pumps, including units for simultaneous heating and cooling and heat recovery, and it markets heavily to data center operators. Its North American arm has historically listed an office in Mississauga, Ontario. DeKalb gives it a production base inside the U.S. market.

Project Scope

The building combines four functions that usually get split across sites: a production floor, warehouse space, a distribution operation and corporate offices. Jacob & Hefner is civil engineer. Sean Henrick of Cushman & Wakefield ran site selection for Aermec.

The developer’s announcement didn’t give a cost, parcel or headcount. Aermec’s president filled in some of that in August. Alessandro Riello told the Italian daily il Nord Est that the company is starting its Chicago-area plant with an investment of 15 million (the paper didn’t name the currency) and 150 employees, and wants production running by January 2028. He described the first phase as 15,000 square meters, about 161,000 square feet, with room to double it later. That’s smaller than the developer’s figure, and nobody has explained the gap.

Venture One knows the market. It has bought and built industrial space in DeKalb before, and Meridian has delivered build-to-suit work for the developer. A repeat developer-builder pair on a 190,000-square-foot box is about as low-risk as industrial construction gets.

Why It Matters

Riello was blunt about the reason: AI is driving up demand for data center cooling, and he called climate change and AI market opportunities. Chillers have been one of the long-lead items on data center and institutional jobs, and buyers have paid for it in schedule. Every new domestic production line for cooling equipment helps at the margin, especially for owners trying to buy closer to home.

DeKalb also keeps stacking industrial users along the I-88 corridor west of Chicago, where land is cheaper than in the core suburbs and labor is still within reach.

The open question is product mix. Aermec hasn’t said which chiller lines it’ll build in DeKalb or at what volume, and that’s what data center buyers will want to know. The talk of doubling the plant suggests Aermec expects the answer to get bigger.

Project Team & Details