(The Boston Globe posted the following story by Thomas C. Palmer Jr. on its website on May 24.)
BOSTON — For years, the rail company CSX Inc. has said that its sprawling freight-loading facility in Allston was there to stay. A 1994 study of 20 sites along the tracks west to Palmer found nothing else suitable, according to Conrail, CSX’s predecessor.
But a group of landowners, developers, and consultants are trying to lure the company to the intersection of a CSX rail bed and the Massachusetts Turnpike in Warren, where they envision an industrial center that could be an economic engine for central Massachusetts.
Amid 1,400 acres of idle farmland on the Brimfield town line, they dream of a giant ”intermodal” transportation facility, where shipping containers bound to and from New England would be exchanged between trucks and railroad cars.
Warehouses, manufacturing — maybe even a casino — would follow.
”You really have to have a town that needs this sort of combination of rail and industrial development,” said John Ryan, founder of a real estate consulting firm hired by the owners of 1,400 acres there. ”West Warren is a community looking for development.”
The plan hinges on persuading CSX to move its operations from Beacon Yards, near the Massachusetts Turnpike’s toll plaza in Allston, where the railroad has a perpetual easement.
Harvard University, which is seeking to buy from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority the 91 acres that CSX occupies, eventually will want the railroad to move so it can expand its campus.
Although railroad officials have said they are in Allston to stay, developable land in Boston is becoming rarer, and few doubt the Allston acreage eventually will be used for another purpose.
”It’s the last big development parcel of land in the city,” said David Wluka, president of Wluka Real Estate Corp. in Sharon, who is working with Ryan. ”It has huge value. It’s a superb site. The issue is how you entice CSX to leave.”
For now, the turnpike’s proposed sale to Harvard of the land CSX occupies is caught in a classic hairball of Massachusetts politics. Turnpike officials want to sell it immediately to Harvard for $75 million, because they need the cash.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and transportation officials have delayed the sale while they negotiate to maintain rights to use the land for commuter and freight traffic.
The Massachusetts Port Authority also wants to keep CSX operations close to Boston, for its easy connections to transporters who use Boston Harbor.
”I don’t know what CSX may or may not decide to do,” said state Transportation Secretary Dan Grabauskas. ”Should they decide to sell or abandon the easement, what we’re trying to do is preserve near-port access for rail, as well as opportunities for the T to expand the commuter rail system.”
Grabauskas is also worried about the traffic implications of moving CSX operations about an hour’s travel time to the west. Freight that now moves by rail between Warren and Allston would instead be on trucks, perhaps relieving congestion in Boston but increasing it significantly on the turnpike.
Harvard officials will not say whether they would purchase the land from the turnpike over the objections of state officials. ”We remain interested in the property,” said university spokeswoman Lauren Marshall. ”We’ll continue to follow the process as specified by the Turnpike Authority.”
Grabauskas said that negotiations between state transportation officials, the turnpike, and Harvard are continuing but could be successfully concluded soon.
While the Warren site is 1,400 acres, a major truck-rail transportation hub for New England would require only a few hundred acres. But the Warren landowners — Rolling Hills Development LLC — have ideas for the rest of this sizable swath of Central Massachusetts. Their plans include industrial development, manufacturing, and an energy plant, uses that would reap significant benefits from being near a railroad and major highways like I-84 and I-90.
Besides the CSX possibility, gambling is the use that the Rolling Hills partners have concentrated on.
In a nonbinding referendum last year, Warren residents voted, by a 59-41 percent margin, to allow a casino in their town, assuming state law is altered to permit it.
”I’d love to see the casino,” said David Callahan, president of Palmer Paving Corp. in nearby Palmer, who helped organize the vote. ”That’s where it should go in, right off the turnpike. They want to bring in revenue, right? That’s the most central point in New England.”
Callahan is a partner in Rolling Hills Development with Vincent Barletta, president of Barletta Engineering Corp. of Roslindale.
State Senator Stephen M. Brewer, a Barre Democrat, said he has been watching proposals for the strategically located land come and go for 23 years. He likes the idea of a transportation and industrial center better than some of the others — such as the gambling plan.
”You can roll out of bed onto the turnpike,” he said. ”That is an opportunity. I would welcome discussion of all of that. It’s a tax base, job creation, gee whiz.”
Besides at the existing Beacon Yards site and the potential Warren location, rail and highway routes also come together in Westborough. Ryan said that site is too small and the area too residential and environmentally sensitive to replace Beacon Yards, even though CSX already owns some land there.
So, in something of a real estate triple bank shot, he has suggested that a CSX move to Warren would foster development in all three places — including Allston and Westborough, where a Ryan client proposes a new ”smart growth” community located at a new commuter rail station.
Meanwhile, no one knows if or when CSX will move.
”Every time we’ve had a meeting, they say they will never move from Beacon Yards,” Ryan said. But, he added, ”The yard is so inefficient, and the land is so valuable, they’ve got to face the issue.
”Some of my friends say it’s so logical it’ll never happen.”