TexAmericas Center Announces 67-Acre Rail-Adjacent Qualified Site Ready for Development
Alamo Site well-suited for large industrial development on TAC East Campus Texarkana, USA (Feb. 7, 2024)
– TexAmericas Center (TAC), which owns and operates the 3rd ranked industrial park and is one of the largest mixed-use industrial parks in the United States, announced today its Alamo Site has been qualified as “Shovel-Ready,” prepared to be certified, and is well-suited for large industrial development. The 67-acre Alamo Site is a near shovel-ready, rail-served, greenfield development site situated on the TexAmericas Center East Campus (TAC East). The site is located at the west side of Cass Street at the intersection of Oak and Cass streets, adjacent to a rail spur. This industrial portion of the site requires the extension of all utilities and road improvements, a distance of about 0.25 miles from the existing right-of-way on Cass Avenue. All utilities have excess industrial capacities. The commercial mixed-use portion of the site is fully shovel-ready. Previously, this property was a wooded buffer area separating a former industrial tract from adjacent roadways and other land uses on the former U.S. Army facility. It can accommodate an up to 750,000 square foot building with hundreds of employees while the commercial area can accommodate over 200,000 square feet of flex product.
A rail siding currently runs along the north and west boundary of the Alamo Site, which connects with a 350-railcar classification yard and provides the ability to receive or deliver unit trains to the UP line that serves the site. Additional switches can be added, if needed, for rail-served activities within the site. The north and south rail lines could be connected to form a loop tack. “The Alamo Site provides not only convenient rail access, spotting and storage for companies that need it, but also easy access to multiple utilities and logistics options – both Union Pacific (UP) rail and major interstates – as well as suitable soil for construction with the capacity to accommodate larger industrial development projects,” said TexAmericas CEO Scott Norton. Last year, TAC launched its Qualified Sites Program (QSP) that is intended to improve on its brand promise of Speed-to-Market and Speed-to-Profit for companies interested in locating on its 12,000-acre industrial park in Northeast Texas. TAC intends to pre-qualify all of its property through this standardized process to ensure the sites can meet the requirements of industry. The organization already offers tools such as expedited permitting and fast-track construction programs; working with a qualified site that is “shovel-ready” can shave months off of a development schedule. The time-savings is a valuable commodity.
Through the QSP, an on-staff Professional Engineer (PE) and economic development professional, each with exceptional knowledge of company needs, grades a specific site for how well suited it is for industrial or commercial development based upon various site selection characteristics. Those characteristics include proximity to transportation infrastructure; access to utilities including electrical, natural gas, fiber, water and sewer; soil testing for condition and characteristics; title oversight; and other site selection due diligence standards.
“We aim to make the site selection process as smooth as possible, and TAC’s Qualified Sites Program is becoming an integral part of providing prospective tenants with the necessary information to make an informed decision,” said Eric Voyles, executive vice president and chief economic development officer at TAC. “Through this program, our team provides all of the information prospective tenants, commercial real estate agents and site search consultants need when looking for their ideal site – all free of charge.” Certified Sites have become an important part of the site selection process, and because TAC is self-certifying its sites the organization is calling its product a “qualified” site,” meaning that they have assembled all the information on the site and it is capable of being certified. The QSP serves as an honest, realistic assessment of the developability, quality, and type of shovel-ready sites available today at TAC. The broader goals are to create a high standard for the inventory of available sites, filling an identified market gap, in the greater Texarkana industrial and commercial marketplace.
The program is spearheaded by TAC Executive Vice President/Chief Operations Officer Jeff Whitten, P.E. at TAC. Whitten is responsible for day-to-day operations, property maintenance, and procurement and management of all real and personal property. He is also heavily involved with the planning and management of the retrofit of existing buildings and development of new facilities for the purpose of transaction or lease for job creation.
Having worked with a growing engineering firm in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, been a municipal public works director, and operated his own engineering firm, Jeff brings nearly 30 years of experience in both the public and private sectors. You can find the full qualified report on the Alamo Site here. You can learn more about the TAC Qualified Site Program here.
About TexAmericas Center Located on the Texas side of the Texarkana metropolitan area, TexAmericas Center owns and operates one of the largest mixed-use industrial parks in the United States. With roughly 12,000 development-ready acres of land and approximately 3.5 million square feet of commercial and industrial product, TexAmericas Center services four states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas).
For four consecutive years, Business Facilities magazine has ranked TexAmericas Center among the top 10 industrial parks in the country, most recently ranked No. 3 in 2023. (#5 for 2022).
