YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
All the pieces are coming together for a new industrial park in Springfield.
Moon Light is the name chosen by owners Erlen Group for the 186-acre site that is in the works at the city’s northwest corner.
In terms of logistics, the site offers some powerful enticements for developers. The BNSF rail line abuts the property along its northern border, and the Springfield-Branson Regional Airport is positioned to its northeast, about a half-mile drive. Missouri Highway 266 is on the southern border of the property and provides easy access to Interstate 44.
The rail line provides connectivity to BNSF’s Kansas City Intermodal facility and the Port of Catoosa in Tulsa, Oklahoma, according to BNSF.
In December, BNSF Railway Co. designated the property as a certified site – an assessment of economic development criteria, such as environmental and geotechnical factors and availability of utilities, sites and infrastructure, to determine readiness standards and minimize risk for developers, according to BNSF.
Bob Newell, vice president of development for Erlen Group, said in addition to the BNSF designation, work is also being done to get the site certified with the state of Missouri.
“It’s not 100% done yet,” he said, noting the only remaining hurdle is required sewer easements at the site. “When you get a site certified, that basically means it’s shovel-ready for development.”
BNSF certification was the culmination of more than a year of work.
“We hope this gives city leaders the ammunition they need to go after development,” Newell said.
Queen City opportunity
BNSF states in its announcement of the site’s rail certification that certified sites are ready to go.
“The program aims to create a catalog of rail-served sites that are ready for immediate development,” it states.
Newell said a lot of development is happening in places like Strafford and Republic, outside of the city of Springfield.
“We’d like to see some of that development come here to Springfield,” he said. “There’s not much real estate left, but we happen to own 600 acres on the east side of town and 750 on the west.”
Danny Perches, Springfield’s assistant director of the Department of Economic Vitality, said the site certification for the planned Moon Light park is a big accomplishment.
“It shows developers or people who are interested in bringing business activity to the city that due diligence has been done for the site,” he said. “Through certification, they’ve minimized the risk and identified all of the opportunities that developers can pursue when looking to develop on this land. It says we have this acreage that’s certified and ready.”
Perches said in the site-selection process, selectors work on behalf of an entity to try to minimize the level of risk and unforeseen challenges. Certification helps.
He added that land serviced by rail is scarce in the state, yet it is desired by any company that needs to access the East or West Coast. The central location of Springfield already makes most of the country accessible by truck in a couple of days, and adding rail as a means of receiving raw materials or shipping out finished goods helps make the property even more attractive to industrial tenants.
“I want to commend the Erlen Group on its efforts to do the work that it took to identify those opportunities for rail service to bring more development to the city,” he said.
Ben Jones, manager of business and economic development for City Utilities of Springfield, said the site is an ideal location from a CU perspective, with three-phase power already available on the east and south sides of the property, plus natural gas and water on the south side.
“In terms of our ability to serve the property, we’re already there,” he said. “It’s a wonderful piece of property for industrial development. We don’t have to build a lot of stuff to get to it.”
When things begin to happen on the site, Jones said, they’ll happen quickly.
“People will drive by one day and say, ‘Wow, that just happened overnight,’” he said. “They’ll all be surprised at how quickly rooftops pop up there.”
Newell said the Erlen Group does not have specific companies in mind for the site. He said there are large manufacturers – which he called mega users – that could require the entire site.
“We remain open to selling the site to a mega user,” he said.
More likely, though, the site will be developed for multiple users, similar to the PIC East and West industrial parks.
“There are some developers in town that speculatively build buildings and hope to fill them,” Newell said. “There’s a niche for that, and I’m not knocking it, but that’s not what we do. We’re going to look for end users. We’re open to building to suit for the right partner, but you can rest assured knowing we’re not going to throw up buildings and hope they get leased.”
National movement
Jones said there is a push to bring more manufacturing to the United States due to supply chain issues and global tensions, and as a result, more large-scale industrial projects are planned.
“We get two to three inquiries a month,” he said. “The competition is intense, and it’s multistate.”
Site selectors are never just looking at Springfield, he said.
“Site location is a process of elimination, not inclusion,” he said. “They’ll start with five sites that work and then start eliminating them.”
A local advantage, he said, is that city, county, CU and chamber of commerce officials all work together, convening weekly to talk things through. And the utility has the capacity to take on industrial growth.
“One of the secrets of economic development is most opportunity comes from companies that are already here,” he said.
In a separate development, Erlen Group, through its subsidiary Cold Zone, is in the process of building a refrigerated industrial building on the city’s west side – the largest investment in the history of the company, Newell said.
“That’s a big capital outlay for us,” he said.
The 171,000-square-foot refrigerated building, under construction in Partnership Industrial Center West, will be expandable to 800,000 square feet and will have temperature zones for frozen and cooler products, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting, which put the price tag at $57 million.
The Cold Zone project will likely push the investment on the Moon Light property to 2026 or 2027, Newell said.
“That will give us time to understand what opportunities are out there,” he said. “We’re trying to be open-minded about it.”
Erlen Group also owns and operates Springfield Underground on the city’s northeast side. A former limestone mine, it offers 3.2 million square feet of leasable space underground, according to its website, and plans are in the works for a topside development with industrial, commercial, residential and even recreational elements.
Dame Chiropractic LLC emerged as the new name of Harshman Chiropractic Clinic LLC with the purchase of the business; Leo Kim added a second venture, Keikeu LLC, to 14 Mill Market; and Mercy Springfield Communities opened its second primary care clinic in Ozark.
