(The following story by Bob Okon appeared on the Suburban Chicago News website on September 6, 2009.)
JOLIET, Ill. — The line cars, SUVs and trucks stirring up dust as they rolled into the construction site was a signal that last week’s ceremony for Union Pacific’s Joliet Intermodal Terminal was not going to be your ordinary groundbreaking.
Gov. Pat Quinn was there. So was U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin. Dennis Hastert, the former Illinois congressman from Kendall County who was speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, also joined the celebration.
“This has been a project that I’ve been interested in for a long time,” said Hastert, who retired from the House in 2007 but still has a hand in Washington. Hastert said he did some work on behalf of CenterPoint with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Defense.
The intermodal yard, already under construction before the Thursday celebration, is the key component in the future 3,900-acre CenterPoint Intermodal Center — Joliet also under development.
The project may be the biggest economic development in progress in Illinois.
Gov. Quinn could not think of a larger one, and he said CenterPoint Properties’ Joliet project continues to make Will County stand out as a growth area.
“Will County is going to be one of the fastest growing counties in our state. I’m going to be here a lot,” Quinn said.
Important event
More than 350 people came to the ceremony, including contractors doing work at the site, distribution company representatives with interest in coming to Joliet, local elected officials along with local business people and labor leaders.
The importance of the event to Union Pacific was evident in the presence of the railroad company’s chairman and chief executive officer, Jim Young.
“If you’re looking for a stimulus project, this is it,” said Young, one of many to make use of the Obama administration catch phrase “economic stimulus” to promote the value of the development.
“It’s going to be a big lift for the city of Joliet and the county of Will,” said Joliet Mayor Art Schultz.
Back to work
Long-term job projections for construction and staffing future distribution centers have been estimated at 14,800 — a number that seems impossible to grasp until its proven when CenterPoint Intermodal Center — Joliet is completed years into the future.
But about 1,200 construction workers are expected to go to work from now until June on the Union Pacific intermodal yard alone at a time when building trades employment has been devastated by the building drought.
“Once it gets going, it will put a lot of people back to work,” said Tom Dardis, executive director of the Joliet-based Three Rivers Construction Alliance. “When you’ve got 35 to 40 percent of your workforce on the bench, every job means a lot.”
‘Bumps in the road’
CenterPoint Properties project is transforming the south end of Joliet — much as it did Elwood where the company built a 2,500-acre industrial park anchored by a BNSF intermodal yard. The two projects together will make what might be called the Joliet-Elwood industrial complex the largest such inland port in the country — an exchange point for goods hauled long-distance by rail to be shipped shorter distances by trucks.
The project faced opposition from many of the residents in what had been still a mostly rural area until bulldozers started plowing the land a year ago.
Even Joliet city planners initially opposed the project, saying it would bring too many train cars and warehouses to the area.
The inevitability of CenterPoint’s plan may have been evident by the crowd under the tent and the influence that many of them wielded.
“A lot went into making this project work that a lot of people don’t realize,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson, D-Crete, said as she talked about meetings in her office to sort out issues. “When I heard there were a few little bumps in the road, I said, ‘What are they? Let’s get it done.'”