HAMMOND | City officials are in the initial phases of developing a plan they hope will lure more businesses using rail to locate in the community.
Officials already have had one meeting with Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad officials and plan more as they draft the plan for the area with the working title of the Hammond Rail Industrial Park.
Phil Taillon, the executive director of the city's Planning and Development Department, estimated the area being considered would be roughly bounded to the west by Columbia Avenue, to the east by Cline Avenue, to the north by Michigan Street and the south by Summer Street, although part of the planning process will be to determine the exact boundaries.
The impetus for creating a plan was sparked by comments from Indiana Harbor Belt officials, who said they had been getting inquiries from companies interested in locating near their facility in Hammond. The company's facility interchanges daily with 16 other rail carriers in Chicago. The Gibson Yard in Hammond is one of its major yards as is the Michigan Avenue Yard in East Chicago.
When PotashCorp. broke ground on a storage facility at Gibson Yard in 2012, company officials noted the site allows access to all Class I railroads.
Potash is an example of one type of company that might be attracted to the site, but Taillon said any company using rail in its operations might be interested. He said officials have heard of multiple companies looking for refrigerated warehouses where they can load and unload their products and keep them fresh.
He said the city would not want to locate companies that were not environmentally friendly or were extremely noisy.
The industrial park would be within an area already known as the Hammond Central Redevelopment Area.
The plan for the rail industrial park would aid the city in acquiring grants, and other funding, such as money for environmental cleanup. Tax abatements and tax increment financing may be other options that could be offered. Taillon estimated creating the plan could take a year.
The city does not own any large tracts of land at the site now and is not targeting any particular property there for acquisition, Taillon said. The plan could help identify what properties the city might consider acquiring in the future. At the moment, Taillon said, if a company wanted to locate in the area, the city would not have any specific property to show it.
Leo Pauwels, director of sales and industrial development for Indiana Harbor Belt, said there is a lack of available vacant land. At the same time, there are a lot of older buildings that were constructed in the first half of the 20th century that are not suitable as they currently stand. For instance, the ceilings may be too low, they are not equipped for Internet service, and their windows may only be single pane or broken. In some cases, where there are stairs the buildings would need to be made compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The plan being put together by the city could help identify what type of buildings are needed for companies that may want to locate near the rail line. Landlords then would have to determine whether it would be worthwhile to retrofit an older building to satisfy the companies' requirements.
The rail transport industry currently is only about a 10th of the size of the trucking industry, Pauwels said, but he indicated a lack of drivers and increased safety regulations could push some of the trucking business to the rail side. Even a 1 percent decrease in the trucking transportation industry could mean a significant boost to the rail industry, he noted.