Des Moines Industrial (DSMI) is poised to move forward with Iowa’s premier industrial transloading facility after recently acquiring 31 acres of land purchased from the City of Des Moines and Norfolk Southern.
Ryan Companies US, Inc. will start construction March 1 with the facility expected to be operational by late 2021.
Located at 200 E. Martin Luther King Jr Parkway, the site has direct access to Iowa Interstate Railroad, Norfolk Southern and BNSF railroads, making it the premier rail-based transportation hub in Iowa. It’s also just one mile from the nation’s busiest commercial trucking intersection of Interstates 35 and 80.
The planned facility will serve as a logistics park where bulk materials are transferred between semi-trailers and trains and vice versa. This will provide flexibility and reduced shipping costs to benefit area businesses and consumers with a potential economic impact of over $10 million annually.
Plans include 15,000 linear feet of track infrastructure, 115,000 square feet of traditional warehouse space, 8 acres of exterior storage capabilities, future cold storage and additional off-site close-proximity warehousing opportunities.
The project was born out of planning work by the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), which first showed the feasibility for such a facility at that location. The Des Moines Area MPO also raised nearly $13 million in public funds for the project, including an $11.2 million Better Utilizing Infrastructure to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The Des Moines Transloading Facility Project is a partnership between DSMI, Des Moines Area MPO, City of Des Moines, Greater Des Moines Partnership, Iowa Department of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration.
Ryan Companies will build the facility designed by VAA and Genus Landscape Architects. In addition to the proposed transloading and warehousing operations, plans provide for stormwater detention basins, native and ornamental landscaping including trees, shrubs and grasses.
DSMI will be open to third party clients and is also seeking warehouse tenants and customers focused on transloading inbound and outbound products in central Iowa. DSMI will provide all necessary transloading equipment and services, fixed and mobile, as required by clients.
