BY KEITH BENMAN, Times of Northwest Indiana
kbenman@nwitimes.com
CRETE | An 850-acre intermodal rail yard just south of Crete gives the proposed Illiana Expressway one more reason to exist, but it could be competition for the intermodal business in Northwest Indiana.
"It's an extra reason for needing the Illiana, but not the only reason," said LaPorte Mayor Leigh Morris. "It just makes the Illiana more important and the timing more important."
The Illiana Expressway would connect Interstate 57 in Illinois with Interstate 65, the Indiana Toll Road, and Interstate 94 in Michigan City. It would run just south of the Crete intermodal site.
Morris did not think the yard would compete with intermodal rail yards that may be developed west and south of LaPorte. The mayor said the one planned for Crete is relatively small and would not compete with the "global" yards that the city and county hope to attract.
The village of Crete was scheduled to hold a special meeting Monday night to consider annexing the 850 acres at the request of CenterPoint Properties, of Oak Brook, which would develop the intermodal center.
The facility would create up to 400 rail yard jobs and up to 1,200 related jobs in the surrounding industrial park, CenterPoint spokesman Matt Tramel said. It would serve the CSX Corp. and Union Pacific Railroad, which run along the east edge of the site.
"The growth in industrial, containerized rail traffic, the growth in overall imports coming from all over the world, is driving this," Tramel said.
The intermodal site would be a powerful jobs engine for the entire region, Crete Village President Michael Einhorn said. However, it could affect the immediate need for a CSX yard in Northwest Indiana.
"There probably is a certain amount of competition involved," Einhorn said. "It would be diversion in some respect."
At the same time, with a connecting Illiana Expressway, it would create the potential for truck transfers from any intermodal yards eventually built in LaPorte County, Einhorn said.
CSX is believed to be looking at a site south of the city of LaPorte for an intermodal rail yard, as is Canadian National Railway. Just east of the city, Norfolk Southern Corp. is reportedly buying up options on land. Closer to Chicago, Hammond would like to develop an intermodal facility at Gibson Yards.
The LaPorte mayor has been a big booster of the Illiana Expressway in part because it would serve as link between any intermodal center that comes to LaPorte County and I-57 in Illinois.
The South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association sees the CenterPoint intermodal center in Crete as a powerful engine for economic development, said Ed Paesel, executive director of the association.
"It's going to open up opportunities for developers that may have never done business in the south suburbs or in Northwest Indiana," Paesel said.