Robinson, vice president of development for NorthPoint Development, said intermodal will be “an absolute game changer” for the market. And a new market report from Colliers International’s Kansas City office agrees.

According to the report, the Kansas City area’s 235.7 million-square-foot industrial market benefited from 1.78 million square feet of absorption in the first quarter, lowering the vacancy rate to 6.1 percent from 7.4 percent a year ago. In addition, Colliers reported, 2.1 million square feet of new industrial space was under construction in the quarter.

But you haven’t seen anything yet, the Colliers report and Robinson said.

“With the new BNSF Intermodal facility in Edgerton, Kan., nearing completion later this year, the Kansas City industrial market is poised to elevate its profile and status among the major national distribution and logistics cities,” the Colliers report states. “As a direct result, major developments are taking shape around Kansas City’s new intermodal while developers speculate that users will select Kansas City as their next distribution center site.”

NorthPoint Development recently took over as developer of the 1,000-acre Logistics Park Kansas City adjacent to the BNSF Railway Co. intermodal facility in Edgerton and jumped into the intermodal spec market two weeks ago, when it broke ground on a 500,000-square-foot speculative distribution center there. Scheduled for completion by the end of the year, the building lies seven miles south of the I-35 Logistics Park, where an 821,256-square-foot warehouse developed by Kessinger/Hunter & Co. LC is weeks away from completion.

Both spec projects are counting on an influx of tenants as the number of intermodal containers BNSF handles in the Kansas City area swells.

Robinson said BNSF’s Kansas City container traffic is projected to grow from about 300,000 containers a year to more than a million containers annually in 20 years. That will drive development of about 60 million square feet of industrial space in the Kansas City area, he said.

“That’s a 25 percent market expansion,” NorthPoint CEO Nathaniel Hagedorn said, “and it’s all going to be Class A, institutional-grade product.”

Hagedorn said UMB Bank, a conservative lender, agreed to finance NorthPoint’s first spec building at Logistics Park Kansas City, a $17 million project, after a two-hour meeting involving the bank’s executive leadership team.

“Their leadership team, including Mariner Kemper and Peter deSilva, got it and want to be part of it,” Hagedorn said.

Other area intermodal projects include the CenterPoint-Kansas City Southern Intermodal Center in Grandview and the KCI Intermodal BusinessCentre.

ARTICLE BY: KANSAS CITY BUSINESS JOURNAL – BY ROB ROBERTS

Date: Friday, May 10, 2013

www.kansascity.com

The news I announced was my decision to buy the weekly newspaper where I had started my journalism career two years earlier.

The question, skeptically voiced by a sister-in-law who shall remain nameless, was, “Where are you going to get the money?”

It was an impolite question, I thought. But given the meager state of my finances at the time, I had to admit it was a fair one. So I explained that the sellers, desperate to get out of the community newspaper business, had offered a low purchase price and several years to pay it.

Now, decades later, I have some more career news to break. And this time, I’m the one who gets to ask the impolite questions … again.

In case you hadn’t heard, I returned last week to my former job as the real estate reporter for the Kansas City Business Journal. And now that the recession is over, I’m more eager than ever to connect with Kansas City-area real estate and development sources — new and old.

During my first interview, I got to catch up with Nathaniel Hagedorn. When I last interviewed Nathaniel for the Business Journal three years ago, he was a project manager for Briarcliff Development Co. Now he’s the CEO for NorthPoint Development, which has been making lots of headlines with its speculative industrial and multifamily projects. So, of course, I had to ask Nathaniel where NorthPoint got the money — more than $200 million of it in a little more than a year — for all its acquisitions and developments.

One of those developments, at the Riverside Horizons business park, was the market’s first spec industrial building since the recession. And Hagedorn didn’t mind sharing where a bulk of the money for it and two subsequent buildings in the industrial park came from: Northwestern Mutual.

To commemorate its joint venture partnership with NorthPoint, a Northwestern Mutual official sent the developers a copy of the children’s book “The Little Engine That Could” and a letter, which have since been framed together and displayed on a wall at NorthPoint’s headquarters. The letter congratulates NorthPoint for replicating the little engine’s “I think I can” attitude to get the complex Riverside Horizons deal done.

NorthPoint was the smallest firm Northwestern Mutual had ever done a deal of that magnitude with. Indeed, Hagedorn told me, the 18 Northwestern employees on one of the conference calls relating to the deal outnumbered the entire NorthPoint staff at the time.

Besides institutional investors, NorthPoint has enjoyed support from entrepreneurial Kansas Citians like the Brandmeyer family, which cashed in on the $490 million sale of Enturia Inc. a few years ago; Rod Alumbaugh, former CEO of Tradebot Systems Inc.; and Ferrellgas Partners LP founder Jim Ferrell.

All this post-recession faith in Kansas City’s can-do development market, which is shared by many other firms and investors, makes this a great time to be the Kansas City Business Journal’s real estate reporter again.

Of course, I might have to ask an impolite question or two as we climb the post-recession mountain together. But oh, the stories we’ll tell.

ARTICLE BY: KANSAS CITY BUSINESS JOURNAL – BY ROB ROBERTS

Date: Monday, May 13, 2013

www.kansascity.com

NorthPoint, which has raised more than $200 million from individual and institutional investors since its February 2012 launch, is plowing the bulk of that money into industrial and multifamily projects.

The Residences at Burlington Creek, which NorthPoint is developing near Missouri Highway 45 and North Cosby Avenue, is a 298-unit luxury apartment complex. The first of its seven apartment buildings, which includes 37 units renting from $900 to $1,600 a month, is scheduled to open Saturday with 30 of its units already leased.

“We have the first four people moving in tomorrow,” NorthPoint CEO Nathaniel Hagedorn said Friday. “And we’ll be finishing another building about every 45 days.”

Hagedorn said he decided to focus on the industrial and multifamily markets because they emerged from the recession with the strongest fundamentals. On the industrial side, the firm is developing 300 acres at the Riverside Horizons business park, plus the 1,000-acre Logistics Park Kansas City in Edgerton, Kan. On the multifamily side, it is also developing Legends Apartments, a 306-unit project in the Village West area in Kansas City, Kan.

But NorthPoint made one of its first splashes with a 160,000-square-foot mixed retail and office project, the Village at Burlington Creek, which is located adjacent to the new luxury apartment complex.

The Village at Burlington Creek, where NorthPoint Development has its headquarters, was previously known as Tuileries Plaza. It was bought out of foreclosure late in 2011 by Briarcliff Realty Co., which was owned by Hagedorn and Briarcliff Development Co. CEO Charles Garney. A few months later, Hagedorn bought out Garney’s 20 percent stake in Briarcliff Realty and renamed the firm NorthPoint Development.

Hagedorn said that $45 million had been invested in the retail portion of the Burlington Creek project before foreclosure but that Briarcliff Realty picked it up for $13 million. Under NorthPoint’s ownership, he said the shopping center’s occupancy has increased to 98 percent from 41 percent, making it a key selling point for the apartment project.

Brent Miles, NorthPoint vice president of economic development, said the roughly 450 apartment residents will, in turn, boost the Village at Burlington Creek by providing “a built-in customer base for the commercial.”

The one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments include upscale features such as stainless steel appliances, granite countertops and 12-foot ceilings on the top floor. The clubhouse includes a saltwater pool, a theater and game room, and the adjacent mixed-use area features sand volleyball courts that will be converted into an outdoor ice rink during the winter months.

According to Hagedorn, demand at both Burlington Creek developments has been strong enough to spur a new mixed-use project on adjacent ground. NorthPoint will break ground in the summer on an unnamed $11 million project, which will include 54 loft apartments above 30,000 square feet of commercial space, he said.

ARTICLE BY: KANSAS CITY BUSINESS JOURNAL – BY ROB ROBERTS

Date: Friday, May 10, 2013

www.kansascity.com

The company will supply floor consoles, instrument panels and door panels to the GM plant across the river in Fairfax as well as another GM plant in Wentzville, Mo.
Governor Nixon says the state will provide about $3.1 million in tax credits after the plant is built and people are hired.

For Riverside, the plant will be a marquis addition to Horizons Industrial Park.

“It has a lot to do with our location,” said Riverside Mayor Kathy Rose. “We are in a prime location for the auto industry; being 3 minutes from General Motors and 12 minutes from Ford makes us a very attractive site.”

The Chinese company already has two similar plants in Michigan.

Missouri is also providing $50,000 to pay for customized training for new workers hired at the plant. The plant is also getting a community development block grant worth about $1.7 million.

ARTICLE BY: FOX 4 NEWS – MICHELLE PEKARSKY

Date: Friday, April 26, 2013

www.fox4kc.com

BNSF Railway Co. is building a 443-acre, state-of-the-art intermodal center in Edgerton. Now, when businesses ship their products by rail to the Kansas City, Mo., area, they will no longer have to send the empty containers back. Instead, companies near the intermodal facility will put them to use.

“That will potentially save millions of dollars in logistical costs,” said Nathaniel Hagedorn, CEO and president of Kansas City, Mo.-based NorthPoint Development, which recently took over the lead on the project from San Diego developer Allen Group Inc. “It’s a pretty compelling business opportunity for companies.”

And those companies are going to need a place to store their products. Enter NorthPoint, which just started building vertical warehouse space on 558 acres of nearby industrial land.

Logistics Park Kansas City, as the project located in Johnson County is called, will be able to unload 500,000 containers a year to start, with developers planning to one day triple that capacity. The facility is expected to attract agricultural exporters, e-commerce companies, and traditional retailers and product distributors.

The first phase of NorthPoint’s development is a 500,150-square-foot speculative warehouse — Inland Port I — being built on 11 acres of land across the street from the intermodal facility. It will have 7 million square feet of vertical warehouse space and is scheduled to be finished by the time the BNSF intermodal center opens in the fall.

“This is going to create a lot of long-term investment and jobs,” Hagedorn said.

He said there would ultimately be thousands of permanent jobs at Logistics Park Kansas City, and the investment will dramatically increase the local tax base. He predicts the entire project will be completed sometime in the next five to 10 years.

The first tenant, The DeLong Co. Inc., intends to have its grain-distribution facility built by Aug. 1.

The DeLong Co. will purchase feedstuffs and grain from local processors such as ethanol plants and elevators before shipping it from Edgerton, with the majority going to China and southeast Asia.

CEO Bill DeLong said the $7.5 to $8 million investment will, between warehouse and logistical employees and truck drivers, create 10 to 15 jobs.

BNSF Railway Co. spent $250 million on the project, the third of its kind after similar hubs in Texas and Chicago. The rail-and-truck yard is located east of Douglas County, between 183rd and 191st streets by the I-35 corridor.

Environmental groups at one point sued to stop the project from happening, claiming the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had insufficiently analyzed its environmental impact. But a federal judge disagreed, saying BNSF and the Army Corps of Engineers had thoroughly looked into alternative locations and included enough environmental mitigation in the project to proceed.

ARTICLE BY: LAWRENCE JOURNAL WORLD – GILES BRUCE

Date: Sunday, April 28, 2013

www.ljworld.com

“Missouri offers Yanfeng USA an excellent business climate from which to serve our automotive customers, and we are excited to join the state’s strong community of automotive companies,” said David Wang, President of Yanfeng USA. “We appreciate the support and assistance from the state of Missouri, the Kansas City region, and the City of Riverside throughout our year-long process of selecting a new location for this facility.”

The company’s Riverside plant will manufacture interior trim components, including door panels, floor consoles and instrument panels for General Motors’ assembly plants in Kansas City, Kan., and Wentzville, Mo. Construction on the facility is expected to begin in the next month, and the plant is expected to be operational in early 2014.

“Our Kansas City region is seeing significant job creation from automotive industry suppliers due to the massive reinvestment from our local auto manufacturers including Ford and GM,” said Bob Marcusse, president and CEO of the Kansas City Area Development Council. “Investment from Yanfeng USA offers further evidence that our region can compete in a global marketplace as a formidable business and lifestyle destination.”

The Kansas City area is home to large-scale manufacturing operations for both GM and Ford, which have expanded to become the region’s largest manufacturing employers. Greater Kansas City’s manufacturing assets include a robust supply-chain network and excellent transportation and logistics services.

The Kansas City Area Development Council and the State of Missouri worked together with the City of Riverside, Missouri Partnership, Platte County Economic Development Council, NorthPoint Development, KCP&L, CBRE Group, Inc., Missouri Gas Energy and KC SmartPort to bring Yanfeng USA to the Kansas City area.

Founded in 1994, Yanfeng Visteon has more than 90 production facilities worldwide and exports products to 16 countries.

ARTICLE BY: MANUFACTURING.NET

Date: Monday, April 29, 2013

www.manufacturing.net

The new 258,000-sq.-ft. plant will manufacture interior trim components, including door panels, floor consoles and instrument panels for General Motors’ assembly plants in Kansas City, Kan., and Wentzville, Mo. Construction on the facility is expected to begin in the next month, and the plant is expected to be operational in early 2014.

State and local officials from the Kansas City, MO area worked for more than a year to land the plant, and had support from NorthPoint Development, KCP&L, CBRE Group Inc., Missouri Gas Energy and KC SmartPort. “Our Kansas City region is seeing significant job creation from automotive industry suppliers due to the massive reinvestment from our local auto manufacturers including Ford and GM,” said Bob Marcusse, president and CEO of the Kansas City Area Development Council. “Investment from Yanfeng USA offers further evidence that our region can compete in a global marketplace as a formidable business and lifestyle destination.”

The company is part of Yanfeng Visteon Automotive Tooling Co. Ltd., which was founded in Dec. 2006 as a joint venture established by Visteon Corp., Yanfeng Visteon Automotive Trim Systems Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. Visteon had been an in-house supplier to Ford, but was spun off on its own. The company, now based in Van Buren Township, Mich., emerged from bankruptcy in 2010.

ARTICLE BY: NATIONAL REAL ESTATE INVESTOR – ROBERT CARR

Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2013

www.nreionline.com

Construction on the 258,000 square-foot plant is set to start next month, and the facility is scheduled to become operational in the first quarter of 2014.

The manufacturing operation supplies parts to General Motors Co. and Chrysler Corp. The Riverside plant will manufacture interior trim components such as door panels, floor consoles and instrument panels for General Motors Fairfax Assembly Plant and Wentzville Assembly Plant.

Gov. Jay Nixon said the announcement is excellent news for Missouri’s automotive industry sector and economy as a whole.

“The historic expansions by Ford and General Motors during 2011 have transformed Missouri’s economy, putting our state on the map as the leader of the rebirth of the American auto industry,” Nixon said in a release. “That momentum continues as we once again expand our network of automotive supply manufacturers in Missouri.”

General Motors is in the process of investing $600 million on upgrades to is Fairfax Assembly Plant, while Ford is investing about $1.1 billion in its Kansas City Assembly Plant in Claycomo so it can construct the new Ford Transit commercial van.

Nixon met with the leaders of Yanfeng in January at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Founded in 1994, the company has more than 90 facilities around the world and exports products to 16 countries.

“Missouri offers Yanfeng USA an excellent business climate from which to serve our automotive customers, and we are excited to join the state’s strong community of automotive companies,” Yanfeng USA President David Wang said in a release.

Riverside Mayor Kathy Rose said she was honored to have a Chinese manufacturer choose her city as part of its global-sourcing strategy. It will be located within Riverside Horizons, a 260-acre development at Interstate 635 and Missouri 9.

“With this announcement, we believe our 260-acre industrial innovations and office development is just starting to provide the economic boost that we expect to contribute to Missouri and the entire Kansas City area,” Rose said.

ARTICLE BY: BUSINESS JOURNAL – JAMES DORNBROOK

Date: Friday, April 26, 2013

www.businessjournal.com

The $45 million project by Yanfeng USA Automotive Trim Systems, a Chinese firm, was announced Friday morning by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon. Construction of the 258,000 square-foot plant is expected to begin next month with operations starting in early 2014.

“Yanfeng’s decision to build a new production facility in Riverside and create 263 new manufacturing jobs is more excellent news for our state’s automotive industry sector and economy as a whole,” Nixon said.

The plant will be built in the Riverside Horizons Business Park being developed by NorthPoint Development along the Missouri River.

“this is another example of the NorthPoint and Riverside team working together to win this project,” said Brent Miles, vice president at NorthPoint. “It adds value to the Horizons Park, especially as it relates to automotive suppliers.”

Yanfeng Automotive Trim is a subsidiary of Yanfeng Visteon of China. Since its founding in 1994, Yanfeng Visteon has opened more than 90 production facilities worldwide and exports products to 16 countries.

“Missouri offers Yanfeng USA an excellent business climate from which to serve our automotive customers and we are excited to join the state’s strong community of automotive companies,” said David Wang, president of Yanfeng USA.

The new Riverside plant is expected to manufacture interior trim components including door panels, floor consoles and instrument panels for the GM plants in Fairfax and Wentzville.

GM is investing $600 million in upgrades to the Fairfax facility, which employs almost 4,000 people assembling Buick LaCrosse and Chevrolet Malibu. It also recently announced its starting a new pickup truck line at the Wentzville plant in suburban St. Louis that will add 1,200 jobs.

The Kansas City area also has benefited from a huge investment by Ford Motor Co. in its Claycomo plant. Ford is investing $1.1 billion here and is adding 1,600 employees locally, bringing the total to 5,400 workers assembling F-150 pickup trucks and Transit Connect delivery vans.

“The historic expansions by Ford and GM during 2011 have transformed Missouri’s economy, putting our state on the map as the leader of the rebirth of the American auto industry,” Nixon said.

Riverside officials also welcome the new plant. Over the past two years, about 1.3 million square-feet of industrial buildings have gone up in the Horizons Business Park.

“Yanfeng is precisely the type of long-term, job-creating employer we want to attract to our Horizons development, not from across town or the state line, bu from around the country and the world,” said Mayor Kay Rose.

Bob Marcusse, president of the Kansas City Area Development Council, said the new Yanfeng plant is a spinoff of the major investments locally by Ford and GM in their core automotive plants.

“As both Ford and GM expand capacity or add new products, opportunities are created with suppliers to those companies,” Marcusse said.

Details on the economic incentives provided by Missouri to land the Yanfeng manufacturing facility were not immediately available.

This is the second announcement in recent weeks about an auto supplier opening a new facility in the area.

Earlier this month, Adrian Steel said it was leasing 11 acres for a new 32,000 square-foot manufacturing and logistics center at the Hunt Midwest Business Center at Interstate 435 and Northeast Parvin Road.

The company plans to invest $4.7 million in the facility and hire 39 people to make and install interiors for the new Ford Transit commercial van to be built at the Claycomo plant.

ARTICLE BY: KANSAS CITY STAR – KEVIN COLLISON

Date: Friday, April 25, 2013

www.kansascity.com

While the physical effects of the new intermodal on its surrounding area in Johnson County are easy to see, the economic effects of this facility on Miami County are more subtle, but bring a great deal of promise, local leaders say.

The BNSF Kansas City Intermodal Facility is essentially an inland port. Instead of loading crates from a shipyard onto boats, large rail-based cranes will lower boxes from warehouses in 535-acre Logistics Park Kansas City onto and off of trains to ship across the nation.

One of the biggest questions area leaders have is, once those trucks leave the intermodal, where will they go?

Analysts anticipate the majority of this heavy traffic will travel through the large network of interstates and highways in the Kansas City metro area. Miami County Economic Development Director Janet McRae said county leaders are keeping a close eye on how traffic on Kansas City’s already busy highways may affect the ways truckers choose to navigate.

When the intermodal is at capacity, truck traffic is expected to reach 11,000 vehicles a day.
“We’re eventually going to get some traffic on our county roads,” McRae said. “The majority are going to be headed to I-35… but people with CDL licenses are only able to drive for so many hours per day. They’re not getting paid to burn fuel in traffic. We’ll see them looking for ways to get to where they need to be faster.”

McRae said east-west arteries like 223rd Street and Kansas Highway 68 may be options for drivers looking for a way to avoid heavy city traffic, and as a result, the county would have to invest more in its road infrastructure, especially in the northwest corner of the county. Participation in groups like the Mid-America Regional Council is helping Miami County better anticipate these opportunities, she said.

The state of Kansas has already anticipated a massive increase in traffic on local roads and has begun preparing for this influx with projects like the I-35/Homestead Lane Interchange and the first diverging diamond interchange in the state.

“What sets them apart is a tremendous amount of public infrastructure investment prior to the completion of the intermodal facility,” Edgerton City Administrator Beth Linn said in a March presentation to the Miami County Commission. “I really commend KDOT for doing a great job in looking for a way to keep traffic from blocking the roadways.”

Miami County’s roads would also need to prepare for heavier, more frequent truck traffic should some warehouses decide to locate in the county. McRae said the county has achieved Foreign Trade Zone status – an attractive quality for international businesses.

Not all the businesses taking advantage of the intermodal facility will be shipping products from overseas. DeLong Company has already leased space at the logistics park and distributes local grain.

“This was a wonderful surprise,” Linn said. “When we first started talking, we thought the intermodal would be shipping shirts and stuff from the west, but they take crops from area co-ops. They’re family-owned, and this is a tremendous idea of Kansas/Midwestern products being exported from right here.”

Perhaps the most promising effects on Miami County are more residual than direct. For example, this massive logistics park and intermodal will require a workforce that’s expected to reach 12,000 people. That workforce will include a range of occupations, from people to man equipment and boxes in warehouses to workers who operate and maintain the state-of-the-art technology that keeps the intermodal running briskly and efficiently.

The jobs it will create can even span outside the logistics park’s boundaries.

“They’re going to need crane operators, but they’re also going to need hydraulic hose,” McRae said. “They’re going to need an HR staff, cleaning services – there are all these spinoffs from the basic intermodal functions that we could benefit from.”

These employees will also need a place to live. Edgerton is anticipating significant growth as intermodal business increases, and part of the city’s long-term plan, Linn confirmed, is to annex into Miami County.

With most of the county’s workforce traveling north for their jobs, serving as a home for a blossoming workforce “is something we do really well,” McRae said.

“That’s Miami County’s heyday,” Commissioner Rob Roberts said. “That’s our token. Residential development is the key to our future.”

Those who are keeping a close eye on the intermodal say there will be a clearer vision of what the facility’s effect will be after it opens in the fourth quarter of 2013. At a sneak peek April 5, several of the Miami County commissioners and other local leaders visited the site and came back with optimistic reports.

“It’s very exciting,” McRae said. “There are a variety of opportunities for the county, depending on where these industries want to go.”

ARTICLE BY: MIAMI COUNTY REPUBLIC – ALLYSHA NEWTON

Date: Friday, April 19, 2013

www.republic-online.com