(The following story by Randolph Heaster appeared on the Kansas City Star website on February 21.)
KANSAS CITY — Slated to be operating by late next year, the opening of BNSF Railway’s 1,300-acre rail-truck center in Gardner could be delayed into 2009.
Skip Kalb, strategic development director for BNSF Railway Co., said the development of the 1,300-acre intermodal hub is proceeding with the hopes that it will be operational by the end of 2008. However, the railroad will be making regulatory filings with federal, state and local authorities in the next few weeks and must await approvals before breaking ground on the facility.
“Some elements of the time schedule are beyond our control, and there’s a 12-to-18-month construction schedule once we get the permits in hand,” he said. “So it would not be unusual if we were not operating in Gardner until early or mid-2009.”
Kalb will provide an update on the intermodal project Thursday at the Kansas City Transportation Association’s annual trade show. His will be one of several events scheduled for the transportation association’s Industry Trade Expo at Harrah’s North Kansas City Convention Center.
BNSF will operate the 300-acre intermodal facility through a contractor, employing about 350 employees. The rest of the space will be occupied by up to 12 million square feet of warehouses and distribution centers.
BNSF anticipates that the Gardner hub will be a key cog in the movement of goods from the Pacific Rim to the Midwest. Containers unloaded off ships off the West Coast would travel by train to Gardner, where they are transferred to trucking operations for distribution to their final destinations.
BNSF, which has similar logistics parks in the Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth areas, projects that the Gardner facility will create up to 13,000 jobs in the area in the next 20 years.