Robinson to move into its largest facility in Chicago with signing of 7-year lease

C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc., the brokerage and third-party logistics giant, will move into a 235,000-square-foot warehouse and office-space complex in suburban Chicago early next year. The facility, located in Des Plaines, Ill., will become the company's largest such operation in the Chicago region.

Robinson, based in Eden Prairie, Minn., signed a seven-year lease on the facility, which includes 220,000 square feet of warehouse space and 15,000 square feet of office space. About 150 employees will be based at the new facility, which will open its doors in early 2016, the company said. Two Chicago-area facilities totaling 148,000 square feet will be closed when their leases expire about the time Robinson moves into the new building, according to Mike Wilken, a company spokesman.

The new facility will be a major hub for North American and international freight-consolidation operations, the company said. It will also serve as the company's "Certified Cargo Screening Facility," where air shipments loaded in the lower holds of passenger planes must be screened at the piece level before being placed aboard an aircraft. The screening center will occupy more than 36,700 square feet, the company said. Robinson was authorized as a CCSF in April 2012 by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

Robinson is the largest logistics company in Chicago, and will celebrate its 100th anniversary there in 2016. The company's 2,000 Chicago-based employees account for about 15 percent of its global workforce.

The Des Plaines deal comes on the heels of the company's announcement that it will build a 207,000-square-foot office building in Chicago's Lincoln Park district to house more than 1,000 employees.