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Developer hopes to build cargo center

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By RICH SHOPES

rshopes@tampatrib.com

Published: April 14, 2009

SUN CITY - A California developer has proposed turning a pepper farm in south Hillsborough County into a distribution center to handle cargo from ports in Tampa and Manatee County.

"It has become apparent that, as ports have grown, there is a need to focus on how you get goods distributed," said Richard Ellison, president of Inland Port Systems in Orange County, Calif.

Ellison said distribution centers are springing up across the country, including in South Florida and Georgia, to handle ports' overflow and offer companies a hub from which to get goods to market.

It was only a matter of time before a center opened in the Tampa Bay area, he said. During the next 18 years, the roughly 40,000 cargo containers that arrived last year at the Port of Tampa is expected to grow to 560,000.

Ellison said his center, called the Tampa Bay Multi-Modal Center, would focus primarily on the Port of Tampa.

Containers brought to the distribution center by train and truck would be offloaded, repacked and sent to cities across the Southeast. The site is a few miles north of the junction of interstates 75 and 275 and has direct access to CSX railroad tracks.

He estimates 1,800 jobs at the center when at full capacity in 10 years and 1,600 jobs during construction. The project is about a year away from gaining state and local approvals.

Ellison is seeking an amendment to the county's long-range development plan to allow construction and operation of the 388-acre light industrial site just north of Port Manatee. It is zoned for agriculture.

Under the plan, some products might be assembled at the center's warehouses, but "there won't be any chemicals there or smokestacks," he said.

About a quarter of the acreage would be restored to wetlands and uplands, and Brazilian pepper trees and other invasive species would be removed.

Ellison said the location - a farm away from roads and buildings - makes it suited for packing and distributing goods.

R. Adam Carnegie, senior project manager for Wilson Miller, estimated 325 trucks a day would enter and leave the distribution center, most from I-75, I-275 and U.S. 41. Wilson Miller is the project's engineering firm and planner.

Some traffic might end up on a future two-lane highway between Port Manatee and I-75. The state Department of Transportation is studying the connector idea, but so far hasn't allocated funds for it.

Ellison said that if the center gets approved, construction could start in about a year. The first companies would show up a couple of years later.

"If you don't have the infrastructure, the shippers will not go to that port, so you need both public and private development, the support infrastructure, to attract tenants, but also the ocean shippers," he said.

Reporter Rich Shopes can be reached at (813) 259-7633.

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