CenterPoint Properties grew rapidly from its Illinois base

Until two years ago, the company with plans to turn nearly 900 acres of mostly farm land in Suffolk into a warehousing and distribution center wasn't widely known outside of Chicago.

CenterPoint Properties Trust, which employs about 100 at its Oak Brook, Ill., headquarters, started in 1984 as a commercial real estate developer, and during the past two decades, the company said it has become the largest owner and developer of industrial space in the Chicago area.

"We do innovative transportation-related development - whether it's air-freight, rail or port-related," said Neil Doyle, executive vice president for development at CenterPoint.

When the company was purchased in 2006 by CalEast Global Logistics LLC, a partnership between the California Public Employees Retirement System and LaSalle Investment Management, it set its sights on the rest of the country.

"The reason CalEast purchased CenterPoint was to take the Chicago model and go national with it," Doyle said.

The firm has now grown to have sales in excess of $350 million, Doyle said.

Since it was purchased by CalEast, the company has accumulated 9,732 acres of land for future development, about half of that in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas. The rest is scattered throughout the Midwest, Northern California and the Southeast, Doyle said.

In Wilmington, N.C., the company has proposed a 605-acre distribution center along the Cape Fear River, and in Savannah, Ga., CenterPoint has a 250-acre project in the works.

But Doyle said the company's flagship development is its Elwood, Ill., intermodal distribution hub, a project spread across 2,500 acres. The company has already spent $1 billion on the site, with plans to spend another $1 billion there. The company has built 8 million square feet of warehouse space and expects to expand to a total of 14 million square feet.

Doyle estimates that the center has created 8,000 jobs, which includes not just the companies that occupy the space but also the regional impact.

Josh Brown, (757) 446-2318, josh.brown@pilotonline.com