(The following article by Steve Brown was posted on the Dallas Morning News website on January 30.)
DALLAS — Union Pacific Railroad Co. is planning a sprawling rail center that will be one of the largest businesses ever built on the Interstate 45 corridor south of Dallas.
The company will announce its plans for the intermodal shipping complex at ceremonies today.
The big industrial facility ? which will handle rail shipments from throughout the region ? will be in the towns of Wilmer and Hutchins just southwest of where FedEx Corp. is building a shipping center.
Union Pacific spokesman John Bromley confirmed that the company was planning to build the complex.
The project “will support the international shipping needs of the region and act as a catalyst to future economic growth,” the company said in a media advisory it sent out late Thursday.
The 350-acre project will be on I-45 at Wintergreen Road south of Interstate 20.
Union Pacific’s rail center is likely to fuel additional growth in southern Dallas County, and it’s already causing a stir in Wilmer and Hutchins.
“These projects will make this a big growth area for industrial [uses],” said Michael Rader, one of the investors who sold land to Union Pacific for the center. “Corporate America follows these facilities.”
Intermodal facilities transfer cargo containers from ships and trucks onto rail cars and vice versa. Union Pacific recently expanded a similar facility in Rochelle, Ill.
Such a center would typically have several hundred employees, but Union Pacific hasn’t specified how many jobs it expects the center to generate.
Union Pacific, which is based in Omaha, Neb., operates smaller rail centers in Mesquite and on South Central Expressway in Dallas.
‘A new focus’
The Wilmer-Hutchins complex will cover more acres and have almost as many facilities as Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.’s intermodal complex at Alliance Airport. That $100 million project was built in 1994.
Industrial real estate developers say the Union Pacific rail center could help make the I-45 corridor a major business artery.
“It will bring a new focus to the area,” said Terry Darrow, president of developer Argent Property. “You have Federal Express down there now under construction.
“And there are not that many places left” for industrial building developers to get close to Dallas, he said.
“Look at the success we’ve seen in Pinnacle Park [West Dallas] and Mountain Creek [southwest Dallas].”
Al Sorrels of the Holt Cos. agrees that the time is right for developing the area near I-45 and I-20.
“The big, flat building sites on major arteries are just not there anymore,” Mr. Sorrels said. “Developers are now tackling sites you would have never thought about five years ago.”
A large rail center on I-45 would be a magnet for growth, he said. “It won’t be instantaneous, but it will happen.”
Years of planning
Mr. Rader said he’s been promoting the area for industrial development since the 1980s. His Prime Rail Interest Inc. has built industrial parks in North Fort Worth and southern Dallas.
“I’ve been chasing this rail deal for seven years,” he said. “It has been put together before, only to fall apart.”
Mr. Rader’s group that sold the land to Union Pacific was one of the developers of the Southport Centre Industrial Park on I-45 and has interests in other large blocks of land in the Wilmer-Hutchins area.
FedEx announced plans in August for a 100-acre regional shipping hub in Hutchins that will initially employ about 200 people. The $40 million complex, under construction on Cleveland Road on the east side of I-45, will open next spring.
“There are going to be additional announcements of industrial projects in that area,” Mr. Rader said. “You will be amazed at the response to this.”