Activity is picking up at the DuPage National Technology Park in West Chicago.

For two years since the dedication in September 2005 the developer has been concentrating on road and wiring infrastructure for the 800 acres of land which is owned by the DuPage Airport Authority.

The land, which is being developed by CenterPoint Properties of Oak Brook, will provide approximately 2 million square-feet for industrial space, 2.6 million square-feet for technology companies and 600,000 square-feet for retail space, restaurants and a conference center.

The tech park is located next door to the DuPage Air Park, which houses the Technology, Research, Education and Commercialization Center (TRECC).

In addition to its proximity to the TRECC and the DuPage Airport, the park is near the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia and the Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont.

To facilitate technology transfer, the park will feature a fiber-optic network that will carry more data at greater speed than data processing in home or in typical office buildings and parks, according to Fred Reynolds, senior vice president of CenterPoint Properties. That will offer resident businesses a competitive advantage, he said.

The latest piece of development was revealed in December when Northern Illinois University announced that it is aiming for a late spring ground-breaking on its planned world-class proton therapy cancer treatment and research center.

The $160 million state-of-the-art center will be situated on 13 acres. It is targeted to open in 2010 and will treat as many as 1,500 patients a year. The NIU Board of Trustees urged the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board to act expeditiously on the proton center’s pending application.

Proton therapy is an advanced, highly effective form of radiation treatment which utilizes proton beams to treat cancer. Non-invasive, painless and precise, it is a preferred treatment in certain adult and pediatric cancers.

Currently, proton therapy is offered at only five centers nationwide, though several new centers are under construction or in the planning sates, according to Cherilyn G. Murer, a health care executive who also serves as chair of the NIU Board of Trustees.

“Illinois needs a world-class proton therapy facility,” she said.

Another building in the technology park is already under construction. Reynolds said the 60,000-square-foot data center and other future buildings will have a 10-gigabit capacity which can be scaled to 100 gigabits. That data center will be the first building to be completed since Pella Windows opened a 175,000-square-foot facility in 2006.

Ground will be broken this spring on another building, which will be designed for certification by the U.S. Green Building Council under its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

About six other buildings are in the proposal stage, but Reynolds said he could not discuss any details at this time.

For more than two years since the dedication of the technology park, infrastructure of roads, sewers, lights and landscaping has been installed, Reynolds explained. Also, “fiber technology was dark but now it is live.”

Outside the technology park, the city of West Chicago “is cleaning up little by little an area which had included companies with outside storage so that the area is more pleasing to the eye,” said Mayor Mike Kwasman.

“I can see hotels and other businesses locating in the area near the technology park in the next five years. We are not only thinking about today but also about tomorrow. We are thinking outside the box.”