A site map of Kingsbury Inland Port. (www.ilpkingsbury.com)
Helena Chemical Company has purchased a parcel of land at the new Inland Logistics Port at Kingsbury Industrial Park, making Helena the first tenant at the intermodal development.
Real estate investment firm Halfwassen Group LLC announced the news June 12, 2014.
“We are excited that Helena Chemical selected Kingsbury for its next site,” said Brent Halfwassen, business manager for Halfwassen Group, in a press release. “By working closely together with officials from LaPorte County and the LaPorte County Office of Economic Development, we successfully completed this important addition to the community.”
Helena worked closely with James Shoffner, president of J. Shoffner General Contractors, to design buildings to fill the company’s needs. The Shoffner firm will be the general contractor of the project and will use all local workers. The Kingsbury Utility Corporation assisted with utility requirements.
Headquartered in Tennessee with several Indiana locations, Helena was founded in 1957 and “has grown to be one of the nation’s foremost distributors of crop protection and crop production inputs and services for agricultural, turf & ornamental, forestry, aquatics and vegetation management markets,” according to its website (www.helenachemical.com). Helena has approximately 4,000 employees and more than 400 sales locations nationwide.
“Helena plans to continue to service our customers with better and more efficient facilities in the LaPorte and surrounding counties area. We are very excited about the site we have chosen and the support of the community that we have received,” Helena Division Manager Doug Goff said in a press release. “Our employees and our customers should see a real significant difference in our facility and workplace safety and speed together.”
To accommodate Helena, nearly 2,500 feet of new railroad right-of-way was extended from the existing railroad line serviced by the Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad. Future plans show the railroad line also connecting to the newly constructed rail spur leading to CSX mainline tracks.
In 2012, CSX announced that it had given the Inland Logistics Park at Kingsbury its CSX Select Site certification, the only one in Indiana and the only one serving the Chicago area.
“The infrastructure investments made to date have transformed these 800 acres into an industrial park with dual rail-service capability that can attract national companies,” Colin Halfwassen, president, said in the press release. “This is an important step for LaPorte County and northwest Indiana.“
Halfwassen acquired the majority of the former Kingsbury Ordnance Plant in 2000, now renamed the Inland Logistics Port at Kingsbury Industrial Park.
For more information on the port, visit http://www.ilpkingsbury.com.