Petter Berntzen, senior vice president at Duke Construction in Chicago, Ill., says that Duke gets a lot of repeat business because clients appreciate the firm's "responsiveness, flexibility, creativity, financial strength, product expertise, and vertical integration of construction and development. We can pretty much do it all."
      Duke Realty Corporation is one of the largest real estate companies in the United States with a total market capitalization approaching $8 billion. The company is a full-service commercial real estate company that owns,

Petter Berntzen, Sr. Vice President at Duke Construction in Chicago, Ill.

manages, or has under development more than 115 million sq. ft. (10.7 million sq. m.) of industrial, office, and retail properties in 14 major U.S. cities.
      Berntzen recaps the story of how Duke won the 2003 NAIOP Chicago Chapter Suburban Redevelopment of the Year Award: "We purchased an old, 259,000-sq.-ft. [24,061-sq.-m.] manufacturing plant used by International Paper, demolished that existing building, crushed and recycled the concrete on-site, remediated environmental site issues, and redeveloped the site into a state-of-the-art distribution center that is now named 'Northlake One.' And, we aggressively completed construction from demolition to having the new building open for business in 12 months." Two of the three current tenants use the site as a distribution center for their home improvement businesses, notes Berntzen.
      In South Bend, Ind., The Tire Rack was, as Berntzen says, "proceeding down the path with a traditional general contractor, but we showed them what we could do to save money and build a better product for them. In fact, they were so pleased with the South Bend facility, that we are now building another center for them in Savannah, Ga."
      In Dallas, Texas, Duke built a 687,000-sq.-ft. (63,822-sq.-m.) warehouse distribution center, with the ability to add about 200,000 sq. ft. (18,580 sq. m.), for Del Monte Foods.
      "The Del Monte property is a prime example of where we created a solution for the client, with some built-in flexibility within an aggressive time frame," says Berntzen. "After Del Monte selected the site on their own, there were 12 national developers competing for the business. Duke won the business, which further proves that our business model is very competitive even when we don't have the benefit of owning the site."