“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.” That credo is attributed to Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, who transformed a desolate area on the city’s South Side into the White City for the 1893 Columbian Exposition, then made the nation’s first citywide plan for growth for Chicago in 1909.

The team establishing the new perishables center at Chicago’s O’Hare airport has made no little plans. Theirs are bold but careful, with a touch of magic implied. They are counting on a lease agreement not yet approved that will enable them to rent, outfit and manage a building not yet completed, with improvements costing $2 million in money they will borrow, to open a new hub, with cargo not guaranteed, to be flown in and out by airlines not yet committed.

By 2016, the team plans for the new center to handle eight to 10 percent of South American produce and flowers imported directly into the Midwest, an estimated $80 million to $100 million in perishables a year. No little plans, indeed. The new perishables center, a first at O’Hare, is expected to open by the end of the year, Shlomo Danieli, a key member of the team, told a dinner crowd of Chicagoland political and business leaders May 15.

The lease agreement has been negotiated and will go before the Chicago city council for approval by June 15, a city official said. It will take about two weeks to install coolers with 10,000 square-foot capacity and inspection stations for Customs & Border Protection and U.S. Department of Agriculture officers, Danieli estimated. A Rose Pest Solutions certified fumigation station at the 27,000-square-foot site is already operating.

Primary volume for the first few years of operation at the center is expected to be flowers, an estimated 140,000 boxes a year, worth about $10 million. Initially the center will employ 25 workers. Plans call for a 60 percent increase in cargo volume in five years. The airport authority spent about $650,000 to bring the vacant building up to code. The facility has direct ramp access for three cargo planes.

Potential revenue for the center is estimated by the airport authority to be $3 million annually in flower imports and another $1 million in combined produce and pharmaceutical processing.

Danieli of Blooming of Beloit, a grower and importer, and team member Jim Richards, owner of Floral Express, which will handle logistics at the center, say the extra cost of flying flowers direct to Chicago, rather than to Miami and then trucking them to Chicago, is about two to three cents per rose-stem. “But the tradeoff to that slight extra cost,” Richards said in an interview, “is two or three days’ fresher product and more of extra vase life. Higher-quality flowers that last longer.”

“Time is of the essence for perishables,” Danieli told the dinner crowd hosted by Ecuador’s Chicago trade office. “The new center will give better service, resulting in better products to improve the image of cut flowers here,” he said. There are 80 million people within overnight delivery range of Chicago, and an array of products for return cargo flights to South America.