Laurie Wink, The News-Dispatch
ELWOOD, Ill. - Braving snowfall and icy roads, 55 La Porte County Multimodal Task Force members and guests left Michigan City on Wednesday for a trip to the CenterPoint Intermodal Center in Elwood, Ill.
Overall, tour members came away impressed by the logistics center and its contributions to the town of Elwood, where, officials contend, the quality of life has not suffered.
The CenterPoint Intermodal Center is a 1,100 acre industrial park adjacent to a 715-acre Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway facility. Once fully developed, the entire area will accommodate 12 million square feet of industrial buildings used for a variety of distribution, warehouse and light manufacturing operations.
The majority of task force members had not seen such a facility before Wednesday's trip and were trying to keep an open mind. They also had a chance to visit with Elwood officials and local business owners.
Joe Coar, with Tonn and Blank Construction in Michigan City, sees the experience as pivotal for task force members.
"It's good to get the lay of the land in Elwood," Coar said. "I would entertain another trip to the area where they are considering putting an intermodal in La Porte County."
Until a proposal is received, no one really knows where a logistics center might be built in the county. The likely site would be at the convergence of railroads, around Union Mills or the Kingsbury Industrial Park.
It's the job of the task force to be prepared to understand what it might mean in terms of jobs, traffic, the environment and other potential impacts.
Stop Intermodals - Save Our County has rallied county residents against such a development, citing perceived problems such as increased noise, air and light pollution along with traffic congestion from a 24-hour-a-day operation.
At the Elwood site, there was an absence of loud noise, diesel smells or continuous train traffic. One train brings containers in and out of the logistics center and trucks also come and go, but two bridges have been constructed so traffic is not impeded.
SISOC member Blair Purcell has been a frequent critic of intermodals and agreed with the majority that there were some positives.
"I'm impressed with its efficiency," he said. "I still don't like it."
Creating new jobs for La Porte County was what many on the tour considered a key benefit of having the kind of multimodal transportation centers now being developed across the nation. The CenterPoint Intermodal Center so far has created 1,755 permanent jobs. Wal-Mart's initial job fair for positions at its two warehouses at the CIC attracted more than 10 times the number of applicants needed, according to Shannon Mullen, development coordinator for the CIC who conducted the on-site tour.
The CIC covers 26,000 acres in a 10-mile by 8-mile area on the former Joliet Arsenal, a decommissioned ordnance plant similar to the one at Kingsbury in La Porte County. Federal and state grants were used to clean up the former military site and prepare it for redevelopment. Learning about the cleanup gave task force member Ruth Minnick, of Union Mills, a more favorable view.
Minnick has been an outspoken opponent of development that would take farmland out of production. She came away from the Elwood tour with a sense that Kingsford Industrial Park could be a good location for a similar facility in La Porte County.
"Knowing what they did here, cleaning things up, is probably the best thing that could happen," she said. "I would be for it if it went out to the ordnance plant. It seems like the logical thing to do."
Guy Vandenburgh, of Union Mills, is a member of SISOC and took the trip. He said the tour opened his eyes.
"I'm having some second thoughts," he said. "It's been an enlightening trip. It's not as bad as I thought it was."
Hugh Glasgow, a Union Mills area farmer and task force member, said he had an open mind about intermodals.
During a discussion with Elwood town officials, the group learned that farm land sold for $6,000 an acre before the logistics center was developed and now is valued at $75,000 an acre.
Town officials said a certain amount of farm land around the town is being preserved and local farmers have begun to transport their commodities on the available rail system.
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