Developer drops rail shops site
Denver’s ProLogis has told the City of Tacoma that it is halting plans to develop the former Northern Pacific Railroad shops site in South Tacoma into a 115-acre industrial park.
But the land’s current owner, BNSF Railway, intends to continue the planning and permit-seeking process that ProLogis had begun, said Ryan Petty, community and economic development director for the City of Tacoma.
ProLogis, smacked hard by the recession, has halted all of its early-stage development planning worldwide, put millions of square feet of warehouses on the market, and sold off its interests in Japan and China. The company, the world’s largest warehousing and distribution center developer, on Tuesday announced new losses even as it consolidates its business.
ProLogis spokeswoman Mo Sheahan said the company is moving swiftly to reshape itself to cope with feeble demand for new warehousing space.
Petty said this week that he first became aware that ProLogis was likely to back out of its commitment to develop the land west of South Tacoma Way late last fall.
When he heard that the company was having financial issues and that its executive ranks were changing, he called his ProLogis contact, who gave him the likely bad news.
At a meeting last month among all the parties in the development program, ProLogis formally declared that it was no longer pursuing the development.
The good news is BNSF has picked up the development where ProLogis left off, said Petty. The city is renegotiating agreements with BNSF regarding the land.
Officially, BNSF had little to say about the land deal.
“The matter is under further review,” said BNSF regional spokesman Gus Melonas.
The city’s utilities arm, Tacoma Utilities, had been set to sell ProLogis land at the north end of the tract near the Tacoma Utilities headquarters to provide access to the site from Highway 16.
ProLogis had hoped that when the business park was fully built out it would contain businesses that would employ between 572 and 950 workers.
The land, bordered by South 36th Street, 56th Street, Tyler Street and Burlington Way, was once the site of Northern Pacific’s South Tacoma shops.
Those shops employed hundreds of workers maintaining locomotives and rail cars. The railroad quit using the shops in 1974, demolishing many of the red brick structures on the site.
Other than a few small users, the site has been unused for three decades.
Petty said BNSF has told him it wants to secure all of the development permits and zonings and then sell the property to another developer. The city is not directly involved in marketing the property, he said.
“We have a Rolodex with lots of potential contacts on it, and we’re mentioning its availability to people we know at trade shows and elsewhere, but it’s BNSF’s property to sell,” he said.
John Gillie: 253-597-8663
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