From the Northwest Indiana Times:
It started three years ago when Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad general manager Jim Roots' phone rang and culminated Friday when a ribbon was cut to make way for a 2,100-horsepower diesel locomotive and dozens of orange Potash Corp. rail cars.
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In two weeks, Potash Corp. train cars will begin coming to the yard in earnest, with Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad switching them to other rail carriers for distribution around the United States.
Robert Felgenhauer, Potash Corp. vice president for transportation and distribution, told the ribbon-cutting crowd the best is yet to come, with construction to start this summer on a $40 million fertilizer storage and transfer facility right alongside the newly laid tracks. It will be located just west of Nine Span Bridge.
"This is a rail yard our customers will love and our competitors will hate," Felgenhauer said.
Hammond beat out 41 other sites around the nation that were being considered for the project, Felgenhauer said. And Indiana Harbor Belt beat out the largest railroads in the United States for the job.
The storage and transfer facility will be the first facility of its type built by Potash Corp. in North America, giving it increased access to its customers across the U.S., he said. Completion is slated for early 2014.
Based in Saskatoon, Canada, Potash Corp. is the largest fertilizer producer in the world, responsible for 20 percent of world capacity. In addition to the more-than-two-football-fields-long storage and transfer facility at Gibson Yard, Potash will be building offices and a locomotive barn there.
An estimated 225 construction workers will build those. Once built, about 25 permanent jobs will have been created to staff the facilities and rail yard.
The project is being stimulated with $10 million in incentives from the city of Hammond, most of it payments that will be collected from Potash Corp. in lieu of taxes, Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said.
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http://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/potash-corp-pulls-into-hammond/article_4437b5d3-71e8-5357-9dc5-b402b96b963d.html
