How America鈥檚 buy-now economy is transforming its heartland
| Elwood and Manhattan, Illinois
(Editor鈥檚 note: This story is part of the Monitor鈥檚 summerlong series following old U.S. Route 66聽from Chicago to Santa Monica, California.)
On certain evenings in Will County, Illinois, from the raised overpasses that cross its highways, a contrast becomes apparent. Freight trains inch past long-grass prairie in long, metallic lines. Semitrucks stream through newly widened intersections and closed-loop designated routes. And beyond them, bison brought back to the region a decade ago graze quietly on protected land 鈥� land that once produced explosives for three American wars.
Old U.S. Route 66, too, passes right through it.
Why We Wrote This
When Americans tap the buy-now button online, a complex logistical operation begins that can deliver goods faster than ever. In central Illinois, sprawling infrastructure makes that possible 鈥� and transforms the land and lives of people who live there.
Along this stretch of the road, two very different parts of America exist side by side. One is the remnant of what Cyrus Avery imagined a century ago, when he first proposed Route 66 as the 鈥淢ain Street of America鈥�: local, optimistic, built around the freedom of the open road and the vast landscapes it crossed. The vision was to connect thousands of local businesses and far-flung communities in a national marketplace.
The other side is a logistics system of astonishing speed and precision, and it is central to the current geography of American commerce. Here, that same vision of a connected national marketplace has become less a destination than a continental-scale conveyor belt beneath an American way of life.
CenterPoint Intermodal Center sits at the center of this logistics system in a corridor just southwest of Chicago. It receives imported goods from West Coast ports and then delivers them into the American heartland.
In just 20 years, CenterPoint has become the central node of the American retail economy. More than 3 million shipping containers pass through the facility every year, carrying an estimated $100 billion in goods before being fanned out, in every direction, to storefronts and family front doors across the Midwest and beyond.
It is served by two Class I railroads and two interstate highways. It has 10 square miles of land holding a latticework of rail spurs, regimented stacks of intermodal containers, and rows of wide-span gantry cranes. There are millions of square feet of warehouse space and thousands of big rigs moving goods around the clock.
鈥淵ou are in the heartbeat of the country here,鈥� says Adam Roth, a longtime leasing agent for CenterPoint and executive vice president of NAI Hiffman, a commercial real estate firm.
Logistics hubs do not draw the public fascination of artificial intelligence or futuristic robotics 鈥� or even the nostalgia that surrounds Route 66. But CenterPoint and hubs like it reveal something equally important about the country Americans have built for themselves.
Here, fresh fruit arrives year-round from thousands of miles away. Press a digital 鈥淏uy now鈥� button, and online orders appear at front doors within a day, sometimes hours. A product unloaded from a container ship in Los Angeles can be sitting on a store shelf in Ohio before the week is out.
鈥淢y dad said to me, 鈥業t鈥檚 really interesting that we eat better than pharaohs did,鈥欌�� Mr. Roth says. 鈥淏ecause they ate whatever was in season, whatever they could get their hands on. Whereas we can go and get almost anything, even more, any time of the year.鈥�
But such abundance also brings an American dilemma 鈥� at least on the Main Street level of the country. CenterPoint has already established itself as the largest inland port in North America. Now, another developer, NorthPoint, has plans to nearly double the warehouse capacity of the region 鈥� and thus the number of trucks.
This land the proposal covers is mostly farmland, including small, rural towns that also serve as quiet bedroom communities for professionals throughout the Chicago metropolitan area.
There are conflicts, competing visions clashing, and the stakes are high. As America鈥檚 logistics machine keeps expanding, the benefits include lower costs and greater convenience for U.S. consumers. That expansion might be progress 鈥� another stage in Avery鈥檚 original vision of a grand national marketplace.
That progress, however, can be measured against the disruption of the daily lives of the people who live here 鈥� some of them in a small town just a few miles down the road.
II.
On a sunny Friday afternoon in May, John Kieken and his brother-in-law, Ron Adamski, are driving down a historic stretch of Route 66, now Illinois Route 53, pointing out the new NorthPoint warehouses that line parts of the road.
Both men have been fighting the developer鈥檚 planned expansion, which, according to current proposals, would impinge upon their homes in Manhattan, Illinois, less than 10 miles away.
鈥淎 quiet community, great people. They take care of each other, always willing to help out,鈥� says Mr. Adamski, a Gulf War veteran who served on the aircraft carrier USS America and a retired air traffic controller. 鈥淚t鈥檚 that type of community 鈥� and we鈥檙e getting swallowed up by outside forces.鈥�
NorthPoint is seeking to acquire some 4,000 acres, or about 6 square miles of farmland and other residential areas, and expand the existing landscape of warehouses and truck routes into parts of their small, rural town.
Not everyone in the surrounding communities is against the plan. Some who agreed to sell their land saw deals fall apart after Mr. Adamski and Mr. Kieken brought legal challenges. They weren鈥檛 happy with them, the men say.
Mr. Kieken has lived in Manhattan for nearly 40 years. In the 1980s, he was an electrical engineer at Inland Steel in East Chicago, Indiana. The 40-mile commute was brutal, he says. But he came home to the prairie every night because the prairie was the point.
鈥淕o outside day or night, and all you hear are the sounds of either farming or nature,鈥� he says from the back seat during the drive. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 hear the trucks. You don鈥檛 hear the sounds of a city. And this is going to change all that.鈥�
He has already been a part of a major transformation of American industry. Inland was bought out in 1998, as the U.S. steel industry waned. Mr. Kieken switched careers, teaching himself web design at a crucial moment of social and economic change, and founding Midwestern Industries, a tech company he still runs today 鈥� without a commute.
Mr. Adamski arrived just seven years ago, seeking the quietude of rural life, and buying a house in a new subdivision of modest homes. It has become something of a bedroom community, the town being the southern terminus of a commuter railway connected to Chicago鈥檚 Union Station.
鈥淵ou should have more say when someone wants to put a monstrosity right at the edge of your boundaries,鈥� he says, gesturing at hundreds of acres of farmland on Cherry Hill Road, not far from where he lives.
In 2020, the two men the grassroots organization Stop NorthPoint, and, today, they are part of an ongoing 鈥渜uality of life鈥� lawsuit against the developer.
It coalesced after Mr. Adamski won a seat on the village board 鈥� part of a wave election that replaced supporters of economic development and brought in leaders broadly sympathetic to the anti-warehouse cause.
Three years after Mr. Adamski鈥檚 election, the Manhattan Village Board to formally join the Stop NorthPoint lawsuit against the developer and the city of Joliet.
Mr. Adamski, whose name is on the lawsuit, abstained from the vote, seeing a conflict of interest as a public official. He had given the movement its foothold in village government. Now, in a final act of civic scruple, he stepped aside and let the village carry it forward on its own.
III.
Large forces of history have converged in Will County before. Decades ago, CenterPoint鈥檚 land was occupied by the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant, which opened in 1940. To build it, the U.S. government displaced those living on 450 family farms 鈥� most through negotiated purchases, but others through eminent domain.
At its peak, the Joliet arsenal employed more than 10,000 people and produced more TNT than any facility in the world. It made the majority of American munitions for World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Most work at the arsenal stopped in 1976, the nation鈥檚 bicentennial, and it was later abandoned and declared a Superfund site.
In 1996, Congress . Almost 20,000 acres were used to create the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, a nature preserve, to bring back the original landscape before the farms came. (Bison were brought here in 2015.) Another 1,000 acres were used to create the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, now the second-largest military cemetery by acreage in the country.
The transformation of the toxic site included granting CenterPoint about 2,000 acres of land as part of a wider agreement with federal, state, and local officials to clean it up. The company also received in public tax financing along with agreements that local authorities would provide necessary infrastructure.
Its proposal to the small town of Elwood in the early 2000s promised an economic boom. The pitch included an estimated 12,000 well-paying new jobs. Elwood was enthusiastic, and it gave the developer 20 years without having to pay property taxes.
By 2013, however, Elwood sued the center. It claimed the project had produced 鈥� most of them low-wage warehouse work 鈥� and brought in less than half the projected tax revenue from economic activity.
Instead, the lawsuit said, truck traffic and road maintenance had overwhelmed the village. On top of that, the town was $30 million in debt from costs of providing infrastructure.
That lawsuit marked an important turning point: Elwood shifted from an enthusiastic partner to an increasingly vocal critic of the logistics hub it had helped build. The city of Joliet also had legal disputes with the developer over the years. But in June 2025, the city council unanimously approved a resolving years of regional litigation.
Under the settlement, truck traffic must now flow through a closed-loop road network designed to keep semis off residential streets 鈥� a major concession to community opponents. Critically for taxpayers, the city shed what attorneys estimate as hundreds of millions of dollars in road and bridge maintenance liability.
But that鈥檚 nearly 10 miles from Manhattan, through which more and more trucks are already starting to pass. Many carry the intermodal containers that have dramatically changed how quickly a shirt, or a TV, or a bunch of bananas can arrive at a neighborhood supercenter or be left on a front porch.
IV.
For most of the nation鈥檚 history, the great choke points of commerce sat at the water鈥檚 edge: Baltimore, New Orleans, New York, Los Angeles. Then came the intermodal container 鈥� the standard-size steel box that crosses oceans on a ship, transfers to a railcar without being unloaded, and then arrives by truck at a warehouse.
That single invention made a second generation of ports possible, far from any ocean.
BNSF Railway joined CenterPoint to launch the new intermodal center in 2002. Walmart was among the first large retailers to see its efficiencies in 2006, and it now occupies 3.5 million square feet of space. Union Pacific Railroad connected its spurs to the facility in 2010, and Amazon came in 2015. The center now has 4 million square feet. Dozens more retailers and third-party shippers have arrived during the past decade.
鈥淧eople say Walmart is really a logistics company disguised as a retailer, that鈥檚 how important logistics is now,鈥� says Mr. Roth, the leasing agent who was instrumental in bringing the nation鈥檚 largest retailer to the complex.
鈥淚t used to be: 鈥極h yeah, this is the person that books trucks,鈥欌�� Mr. Roth says. 鈥淣ow, it鈥檚 about the rise of the chief supply chain officer as one of the most important executives in any retail company.鈥�
During a drive through the complex, as Mr. Roth explains the site鈥檚 history and current occupants, his phone rings often. CenterPoint still has hundreds of acres on site to develop, and he鈥檚 working on another deal.
V.
After driving through parts of Joliet and Elwood, Mr. Kieken and Mr. Adamski head back to their hometown of Manhattan. They note the truck traffic. At least two or three semis pass through every minute or so. At one intersection on State Street, they point out a corner where a 14-year-old boy was struck and killed by a truck. 鈥淭hat stop sign was the result of that accident,鈥� Mr. Adamski says.
About 20,000 trucks pass through neighboring Joliet every day, . While many use the interstates and direct routes to the intermodal center or surrounding warehouses, about 6,000 per day use local routes and highways, passing through communities such as Manhattan.
Mr. Adamski recalls incidents in which truck drivers, disoriented by the maze of access roads, were regularly turning into the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery by mistake 鈥� and, in at least one case, .
鈥淭hat gets you fired up if you鈥檙e a veteran,鈥� he says. As a result of the accidental truck traffic, the cemetery built a roundabout so they could safely turn back to the road.
Joliet鈥檚 legal settlement has frustrated the two men. But they got a recent boost. After much of the Stop NorthPoint lawsuit was tossed, an appellate court reinstated its quality-of-life claims.
Mr. Kieken sacrificed to make Manhattan his home. After four decades living here, he鈥檒l fight to the end, he says.
鈥淲e go to Midewin [National Tallgrass Prairie] all the time,鈥� Mr. Adamski says. 鈥淚鈥檓 a veteran, and so I鈥檓 connected to Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery. There鈥檚 just beautiful places here where we live. We want to keep them.鈥�
VI.
CenterPoint and the logistics corridor it anchors is not an ugly place. Most of the warehouses here are less than 15 years old. Trains enter slowly, surrounded by restored prairie. It is massive, but it is not loud.
鈥淲e鈥檝e had people over the years come and tour, and they鈥檙e expecting it to be more of a beehive, and it鈥檚 kind of not,鈥� says Mr. Roth.
For generations, Americans have repeatedly remade this landscape in pursuit of new forms of prosperity and connection: canals, railroads, highways, factories, suburbs, logistics hubs.
Each transformation brought growth and disruption at once, creating wealth and mobility while reshaping the lives of the people who happened to live where the next system needed to go.
And it鈥檚 true, trucks are essential in this logistics system that has risen up to serve the demands of the new digital economy.
鈥淚n any development, especially anything of this magnitude, you鈥檙e going to have proponents and you鈥檙e going to get people that aren鈥檛 in favor of it,鈥� Mr. Roth says. 鈥淪ome people are going to look at the larger economy. It鈥檚 really a matter of your perspective and what benefits that person.鈥�
West Laraway Road connects CenterPoint to the intersection of old Route 66, about a mile from the site. On a late Friday afternoon in May, a line of semitrucks and other vehicles stretches for hundreds of yards, driven by the ceaseless demand of a new American economy.
Editor's note: The original version of this story, published June 2, misidentified Ron Adamski and John Kieken聽in a photo. The photo caption has been corrected.
