With Funding in Place, Construction to Start on Kansas Transload Facility
The Kansas Department of Transportation announced Aug. 8 that it will provide $4.5 million in funding for construction of the Garden City transload facility.
The facility will load and unload cargo between railcars and trucks. Garden City and Great Bend were chosen out of 111 proposals to develop transload shipping centers last year by the Transload Facility Site Analysis Selection Committee, which included public and private sector representatives.
In February, KDOT committed $3 million to the Great Bend project.
KDOT will contribute a total of $4.5 million to the estimated $14 million Garden City project, $3 million of which will go to rail construction and $1.5 million for local roadway improvements. State Rail Service Improvement funds will be used for the rail siding into the facility, and KDOT's economic development fund will be used for reconstruction of Farmland Road. The SRSI fund is a 100% grant with no local match required; the economic development fund could provide up to $1.5 million, so any cost over that amount will need to be covered locally.
Transportation Partners & Logistics has agreed to pay the cost that exceeds the $3 million awarded for rail expansion at the site. TP&L is an off-loading and distribution site for wind generation components and ships them to various wind projects. TP&L operates a section of rail near its yard on Jennie Barker Road and U.S. 50. TP&L, which serves the wind farm industry in a 500-mile radius of Garden City, has more than 200 acres of turbine blades, tower sections, generators and other components on site and has contracts in place through 2022.
The goal is to start construction by Sept. 1 and have the rail component operational by Dec. 1.
In addition to building an additional rail spur, the project will include redevelopment of property that used to be a part of the ConAgra beef packing plant and reconstructing Farmland Road to better accommodate truck traffic.
As part of the transload effort, Garden City last November decided to spend $2.4 million to buy the former ConAgra meat packing plant that had been vacant since it burned down in 2000. The property’s 336 acres will be added to the transload site. The city has been working on an environmental analysis of the site to determine what types of remediation will need to be done before it is developed for industrial use. The city expects to close on the ConAgra property within a month.
