(The following story by Shaun Sutner appeared on the Telegram & Gazette website on June 20, 2010.)
ATLANTA — This city is built on big business.
Worcester officials who toured freight rail yards and met with business leaders last week to assess how big freight yards affect the community want their own piece.
If all goes according to plan, Worcester within two years will host New England’s largest train and truck freight yard once CSX Corp. — which has four major freight yards in the Atlanta area — doubles the size of its so-called intermodal complex in Worcester.
Once named “Terminus” because so many rail lines converged on the city, modern day Atlanta is still a major national transportation hub; it boasts the nation’s busiest airport and it is the rail capital of the South, with seven CSX freight main lines.
Metro Atlanta also is home to CNN, Coca-Cola, AT&T Mobility, Delta Air Lines, The Home Depot and UPS, among many other big companies.
When Worcester City Manager Michael V. O’Brien and state Rep. Vincent A. Pedone, D-Worcester, sat down with Bob Pertierra, vice president of supply chain development for the Metro Atlanta Chamber last Wednesday to talk, their eyes widened as Mr. Pertierra described the benefits.
Intermodal freight transportation “is one of the strategic industries of metro Atlanta,” Mr. Pertierra said during a meeting at the Metro Atlanta Chamber’s downtown offices near the 1996 Olympic stadium.
“Even in a really tough year, we continue to attract big companies, cargo carriers and distribution centers,” Mr. Pertierra continued, reeling off a string of companies that had recently established major presences here, including General Mills, Colgate-Palmolive, Kraft and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Those companies came to the region specifically because of the access it gave them to freight rail and truck lines, as well as to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and shipping at the fast-growing Port of Savannah. All are modes of moving goods.
The cargo churning through the region in turn stimulates the development of new business, Mr. Pertierra said.
“Anything that increases your modal capabilities and the ability to move freight” should be explored, the chamber official said.
“To me, freight is the economy in motion,” Mr. Pertierra said.
With freight hubs, warehouses and distribution centers — which Worcester officials expect the expanded CSX terminal to spin off to some extent — come jobs, Mr. Pertierra noted.
When Mr. O’Brien asked how many jobs, Mr. Pertierra calmly replied that metro Atlanta has been adding 6,000 to 7,000 jobs a year, even during the depths of the recession.
As the 45-minute session concluded, Mr. Pertierra expressed a perspective on growth that seemed to define Atlanta and the new Southeast, one of the fastest-growing regions in the country, and set it apart from Worcester and New England.
From Mr. Pertierra’s point of view, industrial uses such as rail lines and train yards are being threatened by residential development, not the other way around, and communities should accommodate the business installations rather than push them away.
“Existing rail lines gradually are being encroached on by people,” Mr. Pertierra said. “The challenge arises when zoning doesn’t preserve a buffer around industrial space.”