(The following story by Jane Roberts appeared on the Commercial Appeal website on January 1.)
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — In 2008, city leaders expect Norfolk Southern will finalize plans to move its intermodal yard from Midtown to Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park, freeing residential areas of much of the train and truck congestion that clogs through-streets.
While there is no timeline for a decision, Robert Lipscomb, director of the city’s Housing and Community Development Division, expects it quickly.
“The discussions have been around what the railroad’s needs are on the business side and making sure the city is cooperating fully. Norfolk Southern is one of our customers, and a major one at that,” he said.
A high-level meeting in December with city officials and Norfolk Southern’s president and chief executive lit optimism like nothing else, according to outgoing City Council member Dedrick Brittenum.
“We had a highly successful meeting,” he said. “Should the discussions go well, the affected neighborhoods — Orange Mound, Cooper-Young, Parkway, University District, Pidgeon Roost and Glenview — will be pleased.”
The railroad requested statistical information about Pidgeon Park and was given a list of the federal, state and local financial incentives available to companies considering a move.
Attempts to reach Norfolk Southern were unsuccessful.
Insiders say it has been clear that it wants no publicity on the possible move and is not discussing its plans.
They say Norfolk Southern is completing its strategic due diligence, tabulating its own growth projections and studying the efficiencies of each of three separate accesses to Pidgeon, including a right-of-way Union Pacific abandoned several decades ago that runs diagonally from Bellevue to close to Lauderdale.
The railroad, with its crowded yard in the heart of a residential area at Southern and Highland, for years has said it would like to move to Pidgeon but not without direct rail access to the park.
The only current rail access into Pidgeon, the 3,000-acre city-and county-owned industrial park, is owned by Canadian National Railway, which Norfolk Southern has said was untenable because it would mean having to work around another railroad’s schedule.
To break the logjam, the city this summer set aside $250,000 to study the feasibility of building a separate rail access into the park and sent an overnight letter to Norfolk confirming the process, hoping to attract it to Pidgeon where CN and CSX have already invested millions in intermodal facilities.
“Norfolk Southern would be a tremendous boost,” said Brittenum, who has spearheaded the effort to ease the railroad out of Midtown for several years.
“I live in that neighborhood, and the rail yard is always a topic of conversation,” he said, “because it blocks the north-south access in neighborhoods from Walker to Highland.
“In order of concern, I would say the first issue is the blocked intersections, followed by the truck and train traffic and noise,” Brittenum said.
Dr. Tom West, citizen member of the committee studying the change, says Norfolk would keep its Midtown yard for other other rail business.
West got involved, he said, because he wants the city to concentrate on a goals based on the strength of its workforce and location.
“Moving the intermodal business would help employment in this city because it would enhance distribution opportunities,” he said.
“It would give Norfolk Southern room to comfortably expand operations and give the trucking industry a more focused location for pickup and delivery away from a residential area.”