(The following story by Keith Benman appeared on the Munster Times website on November 16.)
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Experts at the Indiana Logistics Summit delivered a split verdict on whether an intermodal rail center and the thousands of jobs that would go with it will ever come to Northwest Indiana.
CenterPoint Properties Vice President Paige Doehla showed summit attendees Wednesday a map with an arc around Chicago where her company is on the hunt for intermodal opportunities.
That arc stretches from Union Pacific’s Global III Intermodal Terminal in Rochelle, Ill., to Gary in Northwest Indiana. Centerpoint already has developed the 2,500-acre CenterPoint Intermodal Center for BSNF Railway at the former Joliet Arsenal in Elwood, Ill.
“Rich Cooper (chief executive officer, Ports of Indiana) told me I have to mention that we have to bring one of these to Indiana,” Doehla said.
The Ports of Indiana and Purdue University co-hosted the day-long event at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown.
Real estate firms in recent years have obtained options to buy thousands of acres in rural LaPorte County for establishment of a major intermodal rail facility. At such a facility, trains drop off and pick up containerized cargo, usually from trucks.
Other communities in Northwest Indiana also working to attract such a facility, including the City of Hammond.
But when Cooper asked the panel of four experts in general terms what the chances were of locating such a yard 40 miles east of Chicago, they cautioned the Ports of Indiana CEO that it’s not an easy thing to do.
“People point to railroads as having control,” said Thomas Finkbiner, senior chairman of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver.
“But a lot of it is local. You have to build a critical mass of drayage (shipping facilities). It doesn’t happen overnight.”
Even if developers and local communities get behind the effort and build facilities, it doesn’t guarantee railroads will play along, Finkbiner said. He gave the example of the Hoosierlift Intermodal Terminal developed in Remington, Ind., in the 1980s.
The intermodal yard was developed with the encouragement of the Santa Fe Railway but never attracted any significant business.
Joe Dubord, an assistant vice president for retailer TJX Companies, talked about his firm’s long struggle to get railroads to ship direct from the West Coast to Indiana rather than into the “black hole” of Chicago. It can take as long for freight to get through Chicago’s congestion as it does to come from Los Angeles to Chicago.
In October, CSX and Union Pacific Railroad began hauling shipping containers full of merchandise for TJX stores direct from Los Angeles to the CSX Avon yard just northwest of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.