Manufacturers add their weight to push for transport center
Posted on Sunday, November 9, 2008
FORT SMITH — A vision to capitalize on the River Valley’s potential as a multiple-mode transportation hub gained further public support recently, strengthening needed unification that has been missing in years past, officials said.
The Manufacturers Executive Association of Western Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma said it will cooperate in an effort to improve existing rail, river and highway infrastructure because of the “obvious economic impacts to the immediate areas.”
In late October the association issued a resolution of support for creating a regional intermodal authority, days after business and community leaders toured Arkansas and Poteau river ports aboard a U. S. Army Corps of Engineers barge and maintenance tow boat.
Political and business leaders hope a regional authority will take the lead role in drafting plans to better access three Class I railroad lines, a major east-west interstate and a barge port along the Arkansas River.
Usable infrastructure can be found on both sides of the waterway that forms the boundary between Van Buren and Fort Smith, which are on the north and south side, respectively.
Community leaders have spent years contemplating how to best exploit these assets, and the idea of using the River Valley’s transportation systems as an economic development tool is again at the forefront.
This summer, U. S. Rep. John Boozman, R-Ark., whose 3 rd District spans the area, asked community leaders to develop a regional transportation plan to help create jobs.
Boozman, who was re-elected Tuesday to a fourth term, serves on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and its Highways and Transit subcommittee.
The 44-member manufacturing association has pledged to provide data and to support economic studies that will be needed once an authority is created sometime early next year.
Thorough research and planning will help with long-term goals, the association said in its resolution.
“We’re going to have to get some real freight data from the organizations that will benefit from an intermodal facility,” said Michael Barr, a third-generation manufacturer of windows and doors at Fort Smith’s Harry G. Barr Co. and the vice president of the association.
Plans to create a regional intermodal facility come in the wake of a Fort Smith effort to find a new port location. Intermodal refers to the movement of freight among more than one form of transportation.
The city’s port is on the Poteau River and is one of two ports in the region able to handle barge freight. City officials have said the port can’t accommodate a major expansion. In June, Five Rivers Distribution LLC was awarded a 15-year contract to make improvements and help spur further development.
Five Rivers, which was formed in 1995, handles barge traffic at its own location on the Arkansas River in addition to managing the city’s port, which is a few miles away.
The appointment came when the city voided its contract with the former operator, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, and in the face of declining use of the port by shippers.
City officials want a port capable of handling barge-shipped freight containers, an idea encouraged by a consultant’s report in 2000.
Steel is the primary commodity that moves through Fort Smith’s port; 24, 686 tons of steel and lumber were received between February and September.
John Simmons, the Van Buren plant manager at Bekaert Corp., said his business uses Five Rivers’ port at Van Buren to import about 75, 000 tons, or about 50 barges, of steel rod a year.
The Belgian business makes galvanized steel wire and related products such as fences and nails at factories in Van Buren and Rogers.
Simmons, who has been with the company for three years, said a manufacturing site on the Arkansas River helped persuade the company to set up shop in Arkansas back in 1976.
Although a location and other key details for a regional port have yet to be decided, business and political leaders say its creation will serve a higher economic purpose. “All business will benefit from improved transportation due to the availability of more cost-efficient transportation and the reduction in general freight rates to and from our region,” said Jay White, vice president of plant operations for Pepper Source. The Van Buren company supplies the Arkansas poultry industry with sauces and glazes for frozen food products. Ken O’Donnell, a representative from the Bi-State Metropolitan Planning Organization, a regional transportation planning group for eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas, said the uncertainty about the facility’s location and other details are not important at this stage of the planning. Instead, garnering public support from groups such as the manufacturing association is more important. Planning for a regional intermodal facility is like setting the table, he said. “They haven’t brought out the food yet, but we know what’s on the menu,” O’Donnell said.
To contact this reporter: lwhalen@arkansasonline. com
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