(The following story by Eric Smith appeared on The Memphis Daily News website on July 10, 2009.)
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Norfolk Southern Corp. will end months of speculation Thursday by announcing the site of its new Fayette County intermodal facility.
Company officials this week declined to disclose the specific location of the terminal in advance of the announcement, but sources have told The Daily News that the Norfolk, Va.-based railroad will build a massive intermodal facility on land owned by William Adair.
The announcement is set for Thursday at 2 p.m. at the Bank of Fayette County in Piperton; it will be preceded by a lunch at 12:30.
Adair owns about 3,200 acres in south Fayette County, between Piperton and Rossville. Last month he told The Daily News he was under contract to sell 500 acres to Norfolk Southern for the yard, which will be built south of Tenn. 57 and have road access to U.S. 72 across the state line in Marshall County, Miss. A rail spur will need to be built from the main line across private property south to the yard.
This specific site selection has been known since March when The Daily News obtained an aerial image of the proposed yard’s footprint. That site became the preferred locale for the terminal after Fayette County residents and environmentalists objected to Norfolk Southern’s proposed plan to build the facility north of Tenn. 57 near the Wolf River. That initial location would have placed truck traffic onto 57, something that was widely rejected throughout the area.
Norfolk Southern is developing the terminal here to bolster its Crescent Corridor, a $2.5 billion public-private partnership that connects the southeastern and northeastern U.S. via a roughly 2,500-mile rail network.
The regional intermodal yard will transfer cargo containers from rail to truck and truck to rail, helping move goods across the country and potentially providing a huge economic boost for Fayette County and for area logistics and distribution companies.
Norfolk Southern now operates its local intermodal operation at Forrest Yard near the Mid-South Fairgrounds. That facility records just 123,000 intermodal lifts a year and handles about 20 to 25 trains daily, but because it’s landlocked, the railroad can’t expand there.
With this new terminal, Norfolk Southern expects to quadruple its local lift capacity from 123,000 lifts to 535,000 by 2022. The new facility also could more than double the number of local employees, from 99 to 218, while an estimated 454 drayage drivers would be needed to accommodate transportation to other yards or warehouses, up from 110, according to company and independent economic studies.
The new terminal has cleared a few hurdles in the past few weeks. First, the South Fayette Alliance – the nonprofit organization formed to resist the development of the yard in the original locale – formally recommended the Adair site to the railroad.
Second, Rossville’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen on June 18 held the first reading for annexation of the land where the proposed yard will sit, receiving no significant objections from the public. And third, Rossville’s Planning Commission held a first reading for a zoning plan that it will recommend to the board.
A second annexation reading will be Monday, the same day the commission will listen to planning concerns for the yard. The next step will be getting the land zoned industrial for the yard, which is expected to see up to 2,000 trucks a day and will house a host of structures and equipment.