BISMARCK (AP) -- A proposed $20 million shipping facility here has secured its first contract for high speed rail service, Bismarck Mayor John Warford says.
Warford said the company hired to manage the Northern Plains Commerce Centre completed the deal with BNSF Railway. Terms of the contract were not announced.
"To me this is the final major piece for the NPCC, and the key piece," Warford said. "Without it we wouldn't have intermodal."
Intermodal transportation is a rail line with no stops, in this case between Bismarck and a rail center in Dilworth, Minn.
The Bismarck facility is designed to ship products by rail, plane or truck. Cathy Spencer, spokeswoman for the company that will manage the center, said rail service was crucial for the Bobcat Co., the facility's lone tenant.
ADVERTISEMENT
"Bobcat is the big driver for this, and we need their volume," Spencer said. "It will be a fair low volume to begin with ... BNSF did make some concessions."
Under terms of the contract, the Bismarck center would ship a minimum of 1,000 containers the first year, 2,000 the second year, and 3,000 the third year.
Bobcat moved into a warehouse in the complex last summer, signing a 50-year, $100,000-a-year lease for the space.
There are plans to include a concrete loading area and administrative storage building in the complex, Warford said. The center is being funded mostly by local sales tax money.
The facility has been touted as a step toward global competition. The BNSF contract would make Bismarck part of a regional network that includes centers in western Montana, eastern Minnesota and Nebraska.
Warford said the BNSF deal should help the center recruit other shippers.
"It's a slow process, and it's going to take time,"
he said.
