Cole County has been awarded $880,000 in state transporation funds to build a facility that will improve and expand truck-to-rail service for area industries.
In February, Cole County commissioners said they'd support a proposed development on the east side of Jefferson City to provide access to rail service for regional industries that are not located on rail-served sites.
This week, state officials announced they had been awarded money for short-line rail improvements and a transload facility in Cole County, which will establish a facility to cross-load goods from truck to rail and vice-versa.
The county was awarded $880,000 in Missouri Department of Transportation Freight Enhancement Program Grant funds for the project. The money will have to be spent by July 2023.
The site for the facility is located in the Algoa area in what is now known as the Partnership Business Park; it was developed by the Jefferson City Area Chamber of Commerce. Industries located in the area include Scholastic, Command Web, ALPLA, Morris Packaging, Modern Litho, Axium Plastics and Three Rivers Electric Cooperative.
Supporters have said having rail access would provide industries in the park the opportunity to ship or receive goods in rail-car quantities, which has been shown to be more cost effective, reliable and fuel efficient than transportation via truck.
"In order to achieve this, we have split the project into two phases," Cole County Public Works Director Eric Landwehr said. "The first phase would be grading the property and site work. The second phase would be to lay the rail. We can complete the first phase by the deadline, but the whole project cannot be done by then."
Economic development officials said site preparations for the facility could start early next year and be done by next summer. The work on the railroad track would then begin and that phase would be done by the end of 2023.
Rail service to the park is provided by Union Pacific Railroad. Cole County owns and maintains the existing rail spur, which was originally constructed in the 1990s and has been extended several times as new industries have located in the park. This project will further extend the county rail spur to the new multimodal facility, which will have the ability to accommodate the loading and unloading of a wide range of commodities such as asphalt oil, fertilizer, grain, lumber, steel and others.
The facility would be located less than two miles from the Missouri National Guard Ike Skelton Training Facility and a proposed location for a Missouri River port by the Heartland Port Authority. It sits in the western boundary of the park in the southeast quadrant of the North Shamrock and Stertzer roads intersection. The property has been operated as a limestone rock quarry since the 1990s. The Chamber of Commerce owned the property and leased it for quarrying as a method to level the site in preparation for industrial development.
The MoDOT grant will couple with the other grant the county is going after with the U.S. Economic Development Administration for $1.5 million. EDA anticipates making grant awards later this year.
Through a preliminary engineering report produced by Central Missouri Professional Services, the cost estimate for construction is $3.16 million. The breakdown of where the money would go: site work, $655,500; demolition and removal, $20,000; construction, $2.34 million; and contingencies, $150,000.
If they get the federal grant to go along with the state funds they have, that would leave $1.66 million to still be paid.
Capital Land Investment currently owns the property on which the multimodal facility would be located and intends to donate approximately 26 acres to Cole County for the development of the facility and rail spur extension. Capital, in turn, would develop approximately 10 acres north of the multimodal facility into a terminal for the storage and distribution of asphalt oil and other liquid commodities.
The multimodal facility would be owned by Cole County and would be developed as a public-private partnership. Once built, the plan is for Cole County to procure a multimodal operator to manage and maintain the facility.
Cole County, in cooperation with Jefferson City, would be responsible for the construction of all infrastructure necessary to develop the multimodal facility.
The multimodal facility would require extending the existing Cole County rail spur to the proposed site, as well as rail sidings for product loading and unloading, access drive from Shamrock Road, loading drives, utility extensions and storm-water detention.