Motoring along: CentrePort on its way to becoming transportation gateway

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Diane Gray of CentrePort and Chris Lerm of Rosedale Transport inside the new flooring distribution centre in Brookside Business Park. (KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

Drivers of the 20,000 trucks a week who use the two-lane Inkster Boulevard can all see the rail overpass under construction west of Brookside Boulevard.

What looks like a bridge to nowhere in a farmer's field is part of the $220-million CentrePort Canada Way highway. It's also the first obvious manifestation of CentrePort Canada, the inland port.

Notwithstanding the fact CentrePort has yet to land a massive anchor tenant to prove its concept of becoming a tri-modal transportation gateway to North America, Latin America, Asia and Europe, the trucking industry is already starting to crowd around.

Rosedale Transport is the first to move into a new 40,000-square-foot terminal on a 6.5-acre site in Brookside Business Park.

Razir Transport and Meyer Bros. Trucking have both bought space and are about to start building. (All of them will move from outdated facilities elsewhere in the city.) Searcy Trucking Ltd. has acquired land in a Centreport industrial park but has no plans to move there.

Chris Lerm, Rosedale's Manitoba manager, said there aren't any existing facilities in the city for trucking companies looking to expand.

Rosedale is a trucking company based in Mississauga, Ont., that specializes in carpeting and flooring. It was so committed to a CentrePort location for its western Canadian distribution centre it was willing to spend at least $100,000 more to build now.

Rosedale had to install a retention pond and the right kind of pump and generator, an expense that likely won't be required in a year or so when the land will probably have sewer and water services in place.

Diane Gray, CEO of CentrePort, does a good job hiding the frustration she probably feels over the lengthy negotiations required to reach this summer's commitment from the city and the province to spend the $17 million required to service the land.

A draft agreement still needs to be approved and tenders have not been yet been let. But Gray says the process is underway and she hopes pipes will be laid this winter.

But just as the 20,000 weekly trucks on Inkster prove the need for a highway that will take the regional trucking traffic in and out of the region, there is also growing evidence of pent-up demand for all sorts of industrial space.

"We get about 10 calls a week from people from all over looking for space in CentrePort," Gray said.

Gray has said since Day 1 that CentrePort is not a landlord or real estate developer, but a facilitator.

Unfortunately, there is no space that exists for her to accomplish the role of facilitator.

But that's changing.

Over the past two years, more than 100 acres of industrial land have been sold in the two active industrial parks on CentrePort's 20,000-acre footprint -- in Brookside Business Park north of Inkster, marketed by CB Richard Ellis, and Brookside Business Park West, marketed by DTZ Barnicke, south of Inkster.

That land is selling at a faster clip than CentrePort's business plan had forecast and is at an absorption rate more than two times greater than the city's average rate for new industrial land development.

It speaks to the pent-up demand for industrial space in the city in general and CentrePort's business plan concept specifically as a draw for the distribution business.

Robert Scaletta, a sales associate with CB Richard Ellis, said, "It's (industrial land development) never been overbuilt and there has always been a lack of industrial product, especially in the northwest quadrant of the city."

With CentrePort assisting in the marketing, he said the sales process is going well.

All of the 21 companies that have bought land in the CentrePort industrial parks are putting up purpose-built buildings. But Gray said discussions are underway over the possibility of multi-tenant buildings going up to satisfy what is now growing demand for space in the area.

That demand is expected to keep growing. Land for a common-use rail facility has already been identified south of Inkster and west of Sturgeon Road.

The eventual function and design of that facility is still under consideration, but Gray said there is good reason to believe that will increase the demand.

The development of CentrePort has always been contemplated as a decades-long project.

The signs are there the process really is underway.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 15, 2011 B5