Developer revamping Texas logistics park for steel, vehicles and plastic resins

A developer is eager to start construction on a Houston-area logistics park that will have access to two Class I railroads and two major highways as well as proximity to five Texas ports.

Liberty Development Partners has acquired the 1,158-acre Gulf Island Logistics Park and CMC Railroad on top of an earlier acquisition of 200 acres adjacent to the park that will be used to expand the site’s rail-handling capabilities.

The company says the site has access to Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) and BNSF (NYSE: BRK.B), the Grand Parkway and U.S. Highway 90 and is located within 100 miles of five Texas ports: Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, Galveston and Freeport.

Potential customers could include steel and automobile manufacturers and plastics resin producers, according to Marcus Goering, principal of Logistics and Development Resources. Liberty Development Partners is a partnership between Connor Investment Real Estate and Logistics and Development Resources.

“There’s a very strong demand inside the petrochemical market here in this part of the world for sites like this,” Goering told FreightWaves.

CMC Railroad, which previously provided switching services at the logistics park through 2009, will once again resume switching operations, Goering said. There will also be an expansion of railcar storage at the logistics park.

Construction will occur in phases, with the first phase to include drainage and utilities improvements, the creation of a tax zone for reinvestment and an expansion of a local road to accommodate heavy-haul trucks and the logistics park’s connection to Highway 90. The next phase will include expanding rail storage capacity by up to 2,700 storage spaces and widening a second local road to provide connection to Highway 90. That second phase could start at the end of this year.

Helping to finance the acquisition will be Trez Capital, which has provided a $66.5 million loan to acquire CMC Railroad and the adjacent land. Cushman & Wakefield, which aided Liberty Development Partners in the acquisition, will lead marketing efforts.

The development-ready site puts “us in an excellent position to capture activity going on now. We continue to see more inquiries from manufacturing, distribution and industrial-related activities,” Paul Connor, principal of Connor Investment Real Estate, told FreightWaves. “Even from an international scale, we’re already seeing those inquiries come to this location.

“We think we’re very well located as far as the logistics park goes, and we’re excited about what the near-term and long-term future are going to bring,” Connor said.

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