In what may be a watershed moment for its potential development, BNSF designated Galesburg Logistics Park as one of their designated sites on Thursday.
BNSF has designated the 350-acre industrial park a “Certified Site”, one of a handful of the rail juggernaut’s strategically marked locations for potential developers.
BNSF says the benefits of these sites include reduced development time, increased speed to market and reducing upfront development risk.
All this increases the marketability of the property, with KCAP President Ken Springer saying the certification process involves a neutral third party checking all the elements that a developer would want to know about the site, “…environmental analysis, archaeological analysis, wetlands, endangered species, all these reports, and all these question marks that you would typically find and you would have to encounter in the development process'” Springer tells WGIL. “We’ve had a third-party go out and certify that we have gotten all that stuff taken care of.”
Logistics Park has essentially sat unused for the duration of the time the city has owned it. “For those that have been impatient to see this develop, obviously yes we would have loved to have seen something happen by now. This is an important milestone. This gets us closer to the end goal, which is getting someone to build in there and have BNSF recognize the value of the site and see it as a place where they can develop business for their network. That’s a major, major deal.”
Springer even gives credit to KCAP’s forerunner, GREDA which he says did things to increase the site’s marketability like garnering the designation of Foreign Trade Zone.
The entire site is valued at around $6.5 million according to BNSF’s posting about the park on their website. The railway company will essentially market the site now through their economic development arm, helping them potentially increase their clientele while finding someone to invest in the space.
