Four new and expanding businesses will be coming to Suffolk in coming months, making capital investments that total more than $44 million.

Mayor Bobby L. Ralph announced the city’s newest business coups Thursday at the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce’s State of the City address. Approximately 420 people attended the event at the Hilton Garden Inn and Suffolk Conference Center.

The largest investment-$20 million-is being made by Devon USA, a Richmond-based development company which will be constructing two warehouses on Carolina Road.

-Lakeview Development Group is spending $9 million to renovate a 100,000-square-foot building into office, lab and warehouse space for the U.S. Joint Forces Command.

Renovations to the building, formerly occupied by FAG Bearings Corp., will be complete by July 2005, said Robert Williams, managing partner of Lakeview Development. Lake-view will lease the facility to USJFCOM.

The additional space will allow USJFCOM to create several hundred new positions to support the military and its defense contractors, Williams said.

-Target Import Distribution Center, which opened on Manning Bridge Road in 2003, will be growing by 300,000 square feet in coming months. Construction on the expansion to the existing 1.5 million-square-foot building will begin early next month, said Andrew Blake, a Target spokesman. Work should be complete this fall.

-Pender & Coward, a Virginia Beach-based law firm, is opening an office in the city’s historic downtown.

The firm’s Western Hampton Roads regional office will be located at the corner of Washington and Saratoga streets, in the former Gurley Press building. The building-which is undergoing a $400,000 renovation now-will be opening in September with a staff of four.

The Suffolk office will be fully linked to the Virginia Beach office, said Richard M. Matthews, the firm’s chief executive officer. Clients in the Suffolk office will have the firm’s entire resources at their disposal, he said.

allison.williams@suffolknewsherald.com