OAKLAND — After 15 years of planning, a $52 million expansion project intended to give Oakland the largest cargo distribution facility on the West Coast and create hundreds of badly-needed jobs is close to becoming reality.

The Board of Port Commissioners gave initial approval to a deal with industrial real estate firm CenterPoint Properties for a logistics center at the former base. The agreement calls for CenterPoint to build on Port property that once served as an Army supply depot — the first phase of a planned seaport logistics complex that could eventually encompass nearly 180 acres.

The complex will be located off Maritime Street near Oakland’s Outer Harbor. The Port began development there last year with the opening of a $100 million railyard. Under the deal with the port, CenterPoint Properties would construct and manage a 440,000 square-foot building at the complex. Its tenants would likely be companies requiring transloading — the process of transferring cargo between trucks, trains and vessels and preparing it for shipment and distribution.

Typically goods and containers are offloaded from ships and transported by truck to warehousing facilities in other cities, where the products are prepared and repackaged for distribution. The new logistics center would allow that work to occur within the port.

The agreement will go before the board for final approval on Nov. 30. If all goes as planned, construction could begin in the first few months of 2018, coming after 20 months of negotiations between CenterPoint, the Port of Oakland and Revive Oakland and Oakland Works coalitions that include labor and community groups.

Those groups have worked with the port to include stipulations in the deal that include preferences for hiring local residents, especially in the port’s West Oakland neighborhood; special consideration for disadvantaged residents including the chronically unemployed, single parents, formerly incarcerated and military veterans; and funding for the West Oakland Job Resource Center to train job candidates.

Jahmese Myres, campaign director at Revive Oakland and the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, called the jobs programs “groundbreaking.”

“Locally we have one of the worst housing crises, so the living wages, local hiring, and (option to hire) formerly incarcerated workers all add up to jobs that will allow people to stay in homes and pay rent and stay in their communities,” Myres said.

There is a policy in the deal with the port, Myres said, to ban employers in the project from including a box on job application forms that inquires about former convictions, and a stipulation that the employers inform the port and job candidate about which background checks will be done. She thinks the collection of job requirements will be a model for hiring across the country.

And as the move into e-commerce and technology fuels the shipping and logistics industry, creating good jobs for projects like this one will be crucial, she said.

Despite the comprehensive jobs program, some have concerns about the growth of the port.

“The Port of Oakland has a history of neglecting the community’s environmental concerns, and this project is no exception. West Oakland residents deserve clean air and want to work with the Port of Oakland to improve air quality,” said Adenike Adeyeye, senior research and policy analyst at Earthjustice, a law firm that has worked with community group West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project to bring complaints against the city and port about the impact on air quality and community health from expanded freight activity.

The Department of Transportation and Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year launched a formal investigation into whether the city and the port are doing enough to mitigate air pollution in the neighborhood — something the community group fears will increase with the redevelopment of the former Oakland Army base

Port of Oakland spokesman Mike Zampa rejected the notion that the port is not doing enough to mitigate air pollution, noting that the port has brought in the first electric truck for testing, has reduced truck diesel emissions 98 percent in the last eight years and cut vessel emissions by 76 percent.

“This is one of cleanest ports in the world and we are intensifying oversight of operations to continue minimizing impact of trade on the community,” Zampa said in an email.

The Army decommissioned the Oakland base in the late 1990s, leaving planners debating the potential uses of the space for years. The city of Oakland received half of the land and contracted with developer Phil Tagami and Prologis to build out its portion. For its share, port officials have long envisioned a big logistics complex to boost Oakland’s role in global trade.

“We’ll provide the most efficient and most cost-effective means of delivering cargo,” said the port’s maritime director, John Driscoll. “That will be a major driver of our growth in the years ahead.”