Chinese rail company CNR Changchun Railway Vehicles Co. had three critical criteria when it began searching for a minimum 40-acre parcel in Massachusetts to assemble the next generation of MBTA Orange and Red line cars.

The 220,000-square-foot factory would need access to freight lines so that shell vehicles could be delivered for final assembly. The property would need robust electrical capacity to operate an electrified 2,000-foot-long test track and the plant itself. And the $65 million factory would need to be located in a region with a strong manufacturing labor base.

Boston-based NAI Hunneman, the real estate brokerage hired by the Chinese railroad car manufacturer for site selection, identified approximately 50 properties statewide that fit the bill. Following site visits, it narrowed the list to three sites in Western Massachusetts. The preferred site is 655 Page Blvd. in Springfield.

The property wasn’t on the market, but Hunneman’s Michael DiGiano had good reason to believe the owners, Pinnacle Entertainment, would be amenable to a sale. Pinnacle had lost out to MGM Grand in the competition for the western Massachusetts casino license, leaving the future of the property in limbo in early 2014.

“It was never officially on the market,” said DiGiano, an executive vice president at Hunneman. “I had a relationship with Pinnacle (Entertainment) and approached them to see if they would have an interest in selling it to CNR. Of course they said yes – it all depends on the economics of the deal.”

The 40-acre parcel contained a former CSX rail spur formerly used by a Westinghouse factory and more recent tenants, and an Eversource electric substation is located next to the site.

In its mid-century heyday, the site housed seven buildings containing 2 million square feet of manufacturing space for Westinghouse. After the plant closed in 1970, the property became a multitenant industrial area.

Casino developer Pinnacle acquired the property in 2011 for $16 million and demolished all but one of the buildings on the site.

CNR’s strategy was to demonstrate a long-term economic development benefit to the region. While competitors planned to lease industrial space short-term for the MBTA project, CCRV proposed a new factory that would use the MBTA contract as a springboard to compete for future business from other public transit systems in large U.S. cities. It’s now in talks with New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, according to an executive quoted recently by The Boston Globe.

CNR had never purchased real estate in the U.S. before, but negotiations moved quickly after the site was ruled out of the casino process. An option agreement was signed in March 2014.

One of the MBTA’s criteria for the contract was that assembly take place in Massachusetts, with other bidders proposing sites in Pittsfield, Dalton and Lee. In 2014, the MBTA awarded a $566 million contract to CNR for design and manufacture of 284 new Orange and Red line cars to replace the aging fleet.

CNR, which merged with Beijing-based China Railway Rolling Stock Corp. this year, closed on the site in April 2015, two months after the MBTA rejected protests by the three losing bidders: South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem, Canada’s Bombardier and Japan’s Kawasaki Rail Car.

Final designs for the plant are being completed by Gannett Flaming and VHB. The remaining 49,000-square-foot building will be renovated and used for administrative offices.

Construction will begin next spring following final approval of plans by Springfield officials. In addition to the 200,000-square-foot plant, parcels surrounding the site have capacity for an additional 400,000 square feet of manufacturing space, DiGiano said.