The site is adjacent to a 25-acre parcel that Catellus hadacquired earlier, on which the company is developing a 360,000-sfwarehouse facility. The newly acquired site has been approved forup to 3.3 million sf of industrial space, and company officials saythey anticipate a build-out of five to seven years and a totalinvestment of about $175 million.

Specific plans for the project have not been released. Catellusofficials have given their project a name, however: Port ReadingBusiness Park. "This significantly increases our presence in thecountry's third largest distribution market," says Nelson C.Rising, Catellus' chairman and CEO. "It's a large in-fill sitelocated near the Port of Newark and Elizabeth, in a submarket witha low vacancy rate and virtually no new big-box distributionfacilities.

"By applying the same set of land development skills we'veapplied at other challenging sites, like our Kaiser project inSouthern California, we expect to redevelop the site and create astate-of-the-art industrial park," Rising says.