The former Allstate campus, which is being razed and redeveloped as a logistics center by Dermody Properties, has its first new tenant.

Upside Foods, a cultivated meat company based in Berkeley, California, announced Thursday it is building its first production plant in a warehouse under construction at the massive site along I-294 in Glenview.

The company, which received final approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in June to sell lab-grown meat, will lease 187,000 square feet in one of 10 buildings slated for the logistics campus. It is expected to begin operations in 2025.

“We’re excited that the next chapter of our journey toward building a more sustainable, humane and abundant future will be in Illinois,” Uma Valeti, CEO and founder of Upside Foods, said in a news release. “Establishing our plant in this region allows us to tap into a remarkable talent pool, a thriving innovation ecosystem and a notable history of meat production.”

Upside said it will invest $140 million in the facility and create at least 75 new jobs, from warehousing and logistics to food production. An Upside spokesperson said it is a long-term lease but did not disclose the terms.

Founded in 2015, Upside is a pioneer in the production of cultivated meat, which involves growing meat, poultry and seafood directly from animal cells. Chicken, for example, can be grown from fertilized egg cells that are fed nutrients and then multiply. The larger the size of the cultivators, the more meat that can be grown.

The Glenview facility is designed to house massive cultivators with capacities of up to 100,000 liters, making it one of the largest cultivated meat production facilities in the world, the company said.

Upside will start by producing ground cultivated chicken products, with plans to expand to other species and whole-textured formats down the road. The Glenview plant will have an initial capacity to produce millions of pounds of cultivated meat products per year, with the potential to increase its output to more than 30 million pounds annually, the company said.

Lab-grown meat, which is not vegan or vegetarian, is touted as a more humane and sustainable way to supply meat products without raising and slaughtering animals. In addition to Upside, California-based Good Meat also received approval from the Agriculture Department in June to begin selling its cultivated chicken products.

Upside is already producing cultivated meat products at a smaller California facility for use at a partner restaurant, company spokesperson Brooke Whitney said.

The debut of the lab-grown chicken on the menu at Bar Crenn in San Francisco on July 1 was hailed by Upside as the first-ever consumer sale of cultivated meat in the U.S. The Glenview facility represents the company’s first large-scale production plant, with aspirations to distribute cultivated meat products widely to restaurants and eventually retailers, Whitney said.

Upside received about $15 million in grants, loans and tax credits, part of which is drawn from a new provision for startups in the state’s Economic Development for a Growing Economy program, Whitney said. The EDGE program offers annual corporate tax credits to qualifying businesses that create jobs, investment and training programs in Illinois.

The EDGE program was expanded in 2022 to include startups, allowing newer companies to reduce their payroll withholding instead of their Illinois corporate income tax.

“This new facility is a significant investment in our communities — creating new good-paying jobs while advancing our ambitious clean energy goals to create a more sustainable future,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in the release. “We also congratulate Upside Foods on their recent milestone of being the inaugural company to commercially sell cultivated meat in the United States.”

Becoming the first tenant at the sprawling Glenview logistics campus may be another milestone.

In October, Allstate sold its longtime north suburban corporate campus along the Tri-State Tollway for $232 million to Dermody Properties. The Nevada-based developer is turning the 232-acre property, which was annexed by Glenview, into a 10-building, 3.2 million-square-foot logistics park.

Dermody has been razing the Allstate complex and is completing the first of five buildings planned for phase one of its logistics campus. A 295,000-square-foot warehouse supplanting the former Allstate-owned Nielsen building near Willow Road is fully enclosed, with interior work slated for completion by year’s end.

Upside will be going into a 255,000-square-foot building west of Sanders Road. Dermody is working on the building pad and expects to complete and deliver the warehouse by early next year, the company said.

The logistics campus, which is expected to cost more than $500 million including land acquisition, will be one of the largest urban logistics developments in the U.S., Dermody said.

Chicago has become a hotbed for logistics and data center development as more suburban corporate headquarters downsize in the post-pandemic hybrid working landscape.

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