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104 THE JOURNAL OF COMMERCE www.joc.com MARCH 9.2015 INTERMODAL MARKET REPORT SPECIAL REPORT AFTER ATTRACTING ONLY one tenant — a government agency, at that — in eight years, a former U.S. Air Force base-turned-logistics park in the Kansas City area has announced three new shipper tenants in a span of five months. UFP Harrisonville, a wood products manufacturer, and Really Good Stuff, a teaching supplies distributor, in February made public their plans to set up shop within a 300,000-square-foot facility at the 1,340-acre com- plex, which includes a Kansas City Southern Railway intermodal terminal. They will share the space with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which announced its plans to move into CenterPoint-KCS Intermodal Center in September. And, in the fall, Neovia, a third-party logistics pro- vider whose customers include Wal-Mart, said it would operate a 66,000-square-foot facility at the development. The timing of the opening of the logistics park "wasn't great. Things were slow," Michael Murphy, CenterPoint Properties' chief development officer, told The Journal of Commerce. "But now it is day and night compared to five years ago," when the developer began aggressively marketing the logistics park. Really Good Stuff, Neovia and UFP Harrisonville, an affiliate of Universal Forest Products, are expected to use the KCS intermodal terminal on the western part of the complex, Murphy said. Although the terminal's lift activity increased 21 percent year-over-year in 2014, to 52,809 moves, the terminal still has plenty of more capacity as its lift capacity is 96,000 moves per year, said Doniele Carlson, a KCS spokeswoman. The activity isn't letting up at the park, which has direct access to U.S. 71 and proximity to six interstate highways. CenterPoint Properties this month will break ground on a 450,000-square-foot spec building and is in talks with other potential tenants for build-to-suit facilities, Murphy said. KANSAS CITY'S COOKIN' The area's logistics parks may have gotten off to a slow start, but they're rapidly making up for lost time BY MARK SZAKONYI