Cross Roads Centers, a New Orleans-based third-party logisticsprovider, took the entire 600,000-sf Plainfield Building Three inthe Plainfield Business Center off of Stafford Road, Hosfeld says.The 5-year-old building had been occupied by Bombay Furniture andPepsico. However, Bombay went out of business and vacated thebuilding in January, and Pepsico consolidated into anotherbuilding, he says. The building has 36-foot clear heights, morethan 50 dock doors and extra-wide column and bay spacing. "We wereleft by the end of June with a vacant building, but within 30 dayswe had the building fully leased again. That's very unusual,typically you'll get six-to-12 months of downtime on a buildingthis size," Hosfeld says. The lease rate in the area is about $3.25to $3.50 per sf, he says.

He says the lease brings the company's nine-building park, at3.7 million sf, to 100% occupied. Hosfeld says he believes themarket demand now is high, even with the struggling economy. "We'vehad absorption of almost three million sf already this year, thatcompares to 800,000 sf throughout all of 2007," he says.

Also on Friday, Duke announced that it is building the newfacility at Allpoints Midwest, a spec building that will beexpandable to up to 1.1 million sf. The project should be completefor the fourth quarter, say company officials. The new buildingfollows a lease at the park inJanuary by Prime Distribution Services Inc. for another newbuilding. The Prime Distribution facility was completed in 2007 at646,380 sf, but the company asked to expand that building to 1.2million sf when it signed the lease. The Allpoints park encompasses920 acres near a new stretch of the Ronald Reagan highway, and is ajoint venture of Duke and Browning Investments. The property willhave about 12.5 million sf of bulk warehouse when all built out,said Duke officials.