(The following article by Jane Roberts was posted on gomemphis.com on June 6.)
MEMPHIS — The big question about the intermodal yard Canadian National intends to build at Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park is not when, but with whom.
While few who are in a position to know are talking, lots of people are speculating about how the landscape will look when all the players suit up.
“The best thing that can happen would be for Burlington Northern to decide to go to Pidgeon Park with their expansion,” said Robert Milner, former member of the Super Terminal Memphis steering committee.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe, a major force in the movement of goods from the West and East coasts, is well over capacity at its 57-acre yard at U.S. 78 and Shelby Drive.
It’s made no secret that it’s shopping to expand, looking at property in Marshall County, Miss., and in Arkansas.
It has an 18-acre intermodal facility in Marion, Ark., where last year it transferred 80,000 intermodal containers.
Burlington Northern hasn’t ruled out Marshall County, but it does seem set against Pidgeon Park.
“The city’s development of that area will not impact our plans at this time,” BNSF spokesman Joseph Faust said this week.
The next-best scenario, Milner says, is that both Burlington Northern and Norfolk Southern would build yards in Marshall County.
“Then you’d have a western railroad and an eastern railroad with intermodal yards right next to each other,” he said. “It would give us a seamless freight flow through here, which is a great rarity in junctions between eastern and western railroads.”
Tuesday, the City Council gave Canadian National preliminary approval to buy 155 acres in Pidgeon at $1 apiece. It has an option to buy 95 more for $12,000 an acre.
CN intends to invest $25 million in the yard and is negotiating with CSX Corp., the largest railroad in the eastern United States, to join the project with a similar investment.
The two are linked here because they share a yard on South Third.
Both run predominantly north-south routes and want to expand in Memphis to pick up business in Mexico.
Without an east-west carrier at the Super Terminal bringing in the voluminous amount of product imported from the Far East, Dallas Sharp, who owns Detail Distribution, is disillusioned with what he says will pass for the Super Terminal.
The original plan was to include all five Class 1 railroads here on 1,000 acres in Pidgeon Park.
“What we need to be doing is working real hard right now to figure out where the last third of the three-piece pie is going to go,” Sharp said, referring to Burlington Northern.
Union Pacific was once one of the pieces. It left its Memphis yards in 1998 to open a 600-acre intermodal yard in Marion, Ark.
Together CN, Norfolk and CSX make up another third, Sharp said.
Without Burlington and UP, the city is selling Pidgeon Park prematurely, Sharp said.
Jim Apple, senior vice president of economic development at the Memphis Regional Chamber, sees great regional potential if Burlington settles here or anywhere in the Mid-South because the infrastructure will benefit the whole region.
“Our real competition is not between Memphis and Marion,” he said. “It’s between Memphis and Minneapolis, and Memphis and Chicago.
“We do not strengthen our competitive position by getting mired in competitive battles,” he said. “If we are solely focused on economic victories for relatively small political jurisdictions, we’ll lose sight of the much bigger competition picture.”