Riverport Railroad Seeks Recycler

Riverport Railroad (RVPR), a short line railroad that operates in northwestern Illinois, is looking to attract a recycling company to a site it operates in Savanna, Ill.

The company has already acquired roughly 1,000 acres, and is looking to add at least an additional 1,000 acres, which it hopes to use to attract businesses to the site. The company says it expects investments to develop the land to top $30 million and will require both private and public investments.

Kick-starting the investment, Riverport is set to invest $150,000 in engineering costs; $300,000 in new property acquisitions; $600,000 in utility improvements; and $7.5 million in rail improvements to support the following developments and to create the following new full-time jobs.

The land is classified as a Superfund site. A spokesman for Riverport says that a primary issue at the site is the unexploded ordinance at the former military base.

One of the tenants of the new facility is expected to be Rescar, which is looking to operate at the site ($22 million) that will include a rail car cleaning facility, a rail car coating and painting facility, a rail car repair facility and a rail car inspection facility (600,000 square feet of covered buildings on a 60-plus acre site) that will directly employ 160 full-time workers.

Other industries targeted include a food grade transload facility for RVPR ($4.9 million) that will directly employ 30 full-time workers; a rail car scrapping and ferrous and nonferrous storage and distribution facility ($1.5 million) that will directly employ 12 full-time workers; and a warehouse and intermodal transload facility ($3.7 million) that will directly employ 30 full-time workers.

Amenities available with the new land include the following:

·         The largest undeveloped tract of contiguous industrial zoned property in the northwestern Illinois (2,930 acres)

·         The entire property has state enterprise zone status, Federal Hub Zone status and is part of the Jo-Carroll Foreign Trade Zone

·         An active and profitable short line and terminal switching railroad and property development company

·         Connection to the a wider region through BNSF’s Robinson Spur, connecting the Midwest to ports and places in the Northwest and from there to Asia

The company is targeting the recycling industry, including not only scrap metal operations and auto shredding operations, but other types of recycling operations, including electronic scrap recycling capabilities.

The company says it has already has received inquiries from some recycling companies about building on the site. Advantages to building on the site would be the ability to rail material both in and out of the site.

“Our interest is not magnanimous,” says Bill Hooton, director of marketing and business development for RVPR. “It comes from the fact that our site is particularly well suited for such activities (and not particularly well suited for many others) - a large, industrial zoned site, with land and buildings at very competitive prices, far from NIMBY's and with surprisingly effective capacities to move and manage recycled materials to and from marketplaces locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.”

In regards to using the facility for an operation such as computer recycling, Hooton notes that bulk volumes exist primarily in urban areas where both the cost of labor and space to do a preliminary sort is high. Why not transport them by the least expensive bulk transport, rail, to a substantially less expensive environment for that preliminary sort, he proposes.

“Meanwhile, opening a facility on land that Riverport acquired would lower the cost of transportation while creating a profit center in its own right,” Hooton adds.