Edgerton Steps Forward

News

Written by Robin Hixson

Wednesday, 01 July 2009 08:00

When the Gardner City Council rescinded its agreements for a planned Burlington Northern and Santa Fe intermodal facility, officials in neighboring Edgerton wasted no time in putting their town forward as an alternative.

Gardner’s council members voted to cancel the agreements June 22, also authorizing de-annexation of the intermodal site. Three days later, the Edgerton City Council met to prepare for its own negotiations with BNSF, the Allen Group (a principal developer) and Johnson County.

Edgerton Mayor David Dillner said the Edgerton City Council formed a negotiating team in its Thursday meeting and authorized him to work with a financial advisor to prepare a proposal for financial analysis.

Edgerton will likely negotiate three agreements: One will be for annexation of the intermodal and logistics park site. Another will be to lay out specifics of all parties’ roles in the project, and the third will be to specify how the project will be financed.
“There will be multiple parties involved in those agreements — the city, the Allen Group, BNSF, the county and, in some cases, the state,” Dillner said.

In addition to providing 7,700 new jobs and a $1 billion economic boost to Kansas, the intermodal and the adjacent warehouse and distribution complex would provide substantial tax benefits for Edgerton, even considering the tax abatements the city would grant.

Edgerton would annex the properties and would then provide city utilities and other services to the facilities.

Although a June 22 posting on the Gardner city Web site said its officials intended to renegotiate, Bill Crandall, Kansas City president of the Allen Group, said Monday he had not heard from Gardner officials since the rescission.

“My position is that if the city of Gardner presents a proposal, we’d be happy to receive it and look at it,” he said.

However, Steve Forsberg of BNSF media relations said Gardner had made a choice to go in a different direction and, respecting that, BNSF intends to move on to discussion with other prospects such as the city of Edgerton.

“We had an agreement in place with Gardner,” Forsberg said. “That agreement took two years to negotiate, and it was built on the economics of the project. It created a win-win-win in that a substantial portion of the public infrastructure was being paid for either by private dollars from the Allen Group and BNSF or by Johnson County.”

He said two new Gardner City Council members who came on board after the agreements were finalized created a change in the majority viewpoint that, in turn, resulted in the rescission.

Asked whether the necessary agreements with Edgerton or another interested municipality can be finalized by Sept. 15 to improve the state’s chance of obtaining up to $50 million in federal stimulus funds for the project, Crandall said yes.

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Email This

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry