urbanSTL

“For a commodity transportation and distribution company like Oakley, St. Louis is one of the most strategic locations on the river system. No other city connects river, rail and road quite like the Ag Coast of America. Deep barge drafts, the lock-free and ice-free river to New Orleans, connection to the Class-1 railroads and proximity to many industrial accounts that Oakley also services, make the Ag Coast a perfect location for us. Having the largest and most efficient fertilizer terminal in the area, complemented by a high-speed grain loading terminal, makes Oakley uniquely suited to add value to customers throughout the region.”

Using total tonnage data released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the St. Louis Regional Freightway calculates the efficiency of inland ports by dividing the total tonnage by miles of the port, measuring tons moved per mile. The tons-per-mile figure for St. Louis is currently 445,741, compared with the closest competitors of Huntington, West Virginia, and its tri-state area that ships 184,924 tons per mile, followed by Cincinnati/northern Kentucky with 161,946 tons per mile.

Exeter Property Group has closed on what could be the largest industrial sale in St. Louis history with the purchase of Duke Realty’s entire St. Louis portfolio.  The real estate firm purchased 14 warehouses in Hazelwood, St. Peters, Bridgeton and Maryland Heights that cover a combined 4.3 million square feet, in a deal that closed Thursday. The combined properties sold for more than several hundred million dollars, but an exact sales price was not disclosed.
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The 37 tenants across the warehouses included in the Duke portfolio are all 100% leased with an average lease term remaining of 6.4 years. Notable tenants are Best Buy, Reckitt Benckiser, Keefe Supply, Macy’s, Distribution Management, Fiserv and Trane.  The warehouses made up most of what remained of the Duke Realty portfolio in St. Louis, with some properties that haven’t been developed yet already sold in a separate transaction. Duke exited St. Louis at the same time the company chose to exit three other markets, but the St. Louis portfolio was viewed as the easiest of those four to sell since the properties were fully leased, Hrubes said.
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The CBRE broker noted that he sees St. Louis capitalization rates, or estimates for the market’s return on investment, catching up with other Midwestern cities.  “The cap rate in St. Louis is now competing with other markets in the Midwest for investors to place money in, and it’s a good sign of where we’re at in St. Louis that we’re catching up to our competition in Kansas City, Nashville, Indianapolis, Columbus, Ohio, Cincinnati, etc.,” Hrubes said.

Realigning the trackage through the Lenox Tower interlocking increased freight train speed limits from the 10-30 mph range to the 40-60 mph range through the junction. Passenger train speeds also increased from the 40-60 mph range to nearly 80 mph. Increased velocity reduced the existing bottleneck and increased the capacity and efficiency of the St. Louis region’s rail network. In 2018, dispatching control was automated and incorporated into Union Pacific centralized dispatching in Omaha, Nebraska. This coordination optimizes local rail traffic and allows the railroads to increase velocity through the St. Louis terminal, which creates a competitive advantage with other rail interchange locations, such as Chicago. In 2019, the project received approximately $5.1 million in CRISI funding to reconfigure the Lenox Interlocking. Remaining costs were funded through a partnership with the railroads, Amtrak, and IDOT.