CY5 is a ±100-acre container yard facility located within CenterPoint’s Intermodal Center in Elwood, Illinois. It is positioned at the northwest corner of Patterson Road and Noel Road within the Village limits. CY5 is the largest facility of its kind within CenterPoint’s Intermodal Park, and it is one of the biggest facilities in the entire Midwest. CY5 has the capability of housing both wheeled trailer storage units and loaded/unload twenty-foot equivalent contain units (TEU).
A Planned Unit Development (PUD) was obtained from the Village of Elwood for the development of this facility. Manhard was retained to assist with this Village Entitlement and Approval Process. Variances were received from the Village of Elwood to allow container stacking to a maximum of five (5) containers high.
Originally, both sanitary and water services were not available at the property. Therefore, Manhard worked with CenterPoint Properties to secure the necessary easements from the neighboring developments to extend Village of Elwood infrastructure to the future development. Initial easement negotiations took place back in 2017, and procuring these agreements helped to unlock the development potential of the property.
As part of the final design phase, approximately 2-miles of water main was designed and constructed to service the contain storage facility during the Winter/Spring of 2022. Similarly, approximately 2-miles of combination force main/sanitary sewer were also designed and constructed within the same time. A regional lift station services the container storage facility, and it was specified with future compatibility with the Elwood’s SCADA monitoring systems.
Consideration of a future lift station upgrade was incorporated into the original design development. This would allow CenterPoint to upgrade the pumps in the event that a high usage tenant occupied the site during the future.
There were numerous design challenges in addition to the utilities and entitlements listed above. The existing property contained both wetlands and floodplain, and these items needed to be addressed/mitigated with respect to the site plan. In addition, the adjacent thoroughfare was not adequate to handle the projected truck traffic associated with the container storage facility. From an environmental perspective, there were several existing irrigation ponds onsite that needed to be filled, and this action was coordinated with an environmental consultant.
In addition to the challenges listed above, there was an 100-foot Peoples Gas Right-of-Way that bisects the entire property. This existing corridor contained six (6) gas pipelines that transmitted natural gas throughout the United States. The sizes of these pipelines varied from 8-iches to 48-inches. Also, the neighboring Elwood Energy Power Plant also had easements within the property that allowed several existing gas transmission lines and fiber optic infrastructure for data to remain onsite. The approval to cross any of these facilities with future infrastructure (sanitary, water, storm, electric, etc..) was very challenging. Therefore, the utility design needed to be carefully evaluated, and gas pipeline crossings were minimized.
Manhard Consulting acted as the lead consultant throughout the entirety of this project. We worked with CenterPoint to develop a site plan that was compatible with all of the design constraints listed above. To help maintain project economics, several of the existing irrigation ponds were repurposed as overall stormwater detention facilities. This approach saved valuable land for development, and it also helped minimize earthwork operations. Similarly, a new private roadway network was created onsite to avoid a costly removal and reconstruction effort of the Village’s existing roadway infrastructure.
Manhard Consulting was engaged to perform design services, overall consulting/project management, and construction oversight throughout the during of the project. The final certificate of occupancy and acceptance was received for the final tenant during the summer of 2023. There are four (4) national logistics companies that reside within this property.