Ingram's May 2024

spec building dubbed Inland Port I, cov ering 500,000 square feet. A little more than a decade later, the 3,000-acre mas ter-planned distribution and warehouse development boasts more than 14.4 mil lion square feet of operating space. And next door, BNSF Railway’s intermodal rail facility can handle 750,000 cargo contain ers a year, connecting LPKC tenants to a nationwide distribution network. That’s just one of four intermodal facilities in the region: Long before it became part of CPKC, KC Southern was pushing freight through the I-49 Logis tics Center, a 1,340-acre intermodal fa cility in south Kansas City. And North land Park, served by Norfolk Southern, is a $250 million project a few minutes southeast of the Ford assembly plant in Claycomo. To the north, the region near Kansas City International Airport is also un dergoing a logistics metamorphosis. No other air center within a six-state region moves more air cargo each year than KCI, and that critical mass most recently has attracted a development that redefines the phrase “game-changing.” Hunt Mid

The current market mover for logistics development in the Kansas City region is Panasonic Energy’s $4 billion plant for production of electric-vehicle batteries, now just a year away from full operation in De Soto.

west plans to create a massive, 3,300-acre distribution hub called KCI 29 Logistics Park, the largest of its kind in Missouri. Infrastructure work has already begun on a site that eventually will offer more than 20 million square feet of Class A In dustrial space, with direct access to I-29 and I-435, as well as air freight via FedEx, UPS, Amazon Prime Air, and the U.S. Postal Service. In neighboring Clay County, to the east, the city of Liberty has also been busy attracting development, especially with manufacturing firms that are feeding components to Ford Motor Co.’s Clayco mo plant. The gravitational pull from one

of the region’s biggest private-sector em ployers—more than 7,100 people work the assembly site—has attracted national and global parts manufacturers to North Point’s North Liberty Logistics Center, as well as Scannell’s Compass 70 Logis tics Park and 435 Logistics Park. In addition to that embarrassment of riches with rail, road and aerial routes, the region also has waterway options, as Kansas City is the western shipping ter minus of the Missouri River. That gives shippers access to the nation’s largest navigable inland waterway as it links up with the Mississippi River in St. Louis on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

CREATIVITY. PASSION. SUCCESS.

Vanguard Villas | Lee’s Summit, MO

63

I ngr am ’ s

Kansas City’s Business Media

May 2024