April 12, 2008

KABA Meeting Highlights Railroad Strength

By Deneen Smith
The Kenosha News

Economic development types have long promoted the strength of Kenosha County's location between the expanding metropolitan areas of Chicago and Milwaukee.

Speaking at the Kenosha Area Business Alliance annual meeting Friday, Michael Mullen, chief executive officer of CenterPoint Properties, said the region may soon benefit most from being near the confluence of most of the major railroad freight lines in the United States.

Mullen heads CenterPoint, an industrial property developer and majority owner of LakeView Corporate Park in Pleasant Prairie. CenterPoint, which had already been developing properties in the area, began partnering with LakeView developer WisPark five years ago and bought the majority stake in the corporate park, with WisPark remaining a partner.

Industrial development in Kenosha County has focused increasingly on warehouse and distribution center projects, with several major projects announced in the past year. Many of the largest employers at LakeView are distribution centers, and several large-scale warehouse and distribution center operations are under construction or planned in the city of Kenosha.

“Kenosha is emerging as a regional distribution center,” said Jerry Franke, WisPark president and outgoing KABA chairman.

CenterPoint has increasingly focused its development efforts on distribution centers and what Mullen called intermodal centers that combine transfer yards for railway freight lines with distribution centers.

The company has a large intermodal center in Elwood, Ill., with millions of square feet of warehouse centers that takes freight containers from trains that are shipping imported goods from shipping ports, then transfers them to nearby distribution centers for retailers like Wal-Mart.

Mullen (pictured left) told business leaders Friday that with the American economy increasingly depending on imports, and economic and environmental concerns pushing more transportation to rail, the Chicago and southeast Wisconsin region will benefit because most rail lines come together in the region.

“Southeast Wisconsin and northern Illinois are the container capital of the United States because all of the railroads merge here,” Mullen said. “It is right in our backyard.”

At the annual meeting, sponsored by Johnson Bank, KABA celebrated the organization's accomplishments of 2007, in cluding involvement in economic development plans that drew business investment in the community, including the retooling of the Chrysler Engine Plant and the planned relocation of Uline's headquarters to Pleasant Prairie. Through its revolving loan fund, KABA also provided funds that helped a number of mid-sized employers expand in the county.

“It doesn't seem like a recession here in Kenosha County,” Franke said.

KABA honored outgoing Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian (pictured above right) and city administrator Nick Arnold for their pro-business attitude while in office.

The organization also presented its first annual mentor of the year award, honoring Chrysler Engine Plant worker Ann Kelly (pictured left), who has volunteered as a mentor for Durkee Elementary School students for 11 years through KABA's mentor program.

Accepting the award, Kelly said the mentor program has given her a chance to live out a dream of working with children. She told the story of an encounter with a boy she once mentored, the boy now a teenager who told her he was attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The teen, who was a Spanish speaking elementary school student struggling to learn English when she worked with him, reminded her of a game she used to help him with his language skills that she called “king of the hill.”

“Now I can say I feel like queen of the hill,” she said of the award.

See photos from the meeting at KABA's Event Photo Gallery.