Logistics Management

New Logistics Park Gets Underway in Dallas

April 13, 2007

DALLAS—Commercial real estate developer The Allen Group announced it is hosting a grand opening ceremony today for the Dallas Logistics Hub (DLH), which it said is the largest new logistics park under development in North America.

The DLH is comprised of 6,000 acres that are master-planned for the potential development of 60 million square feet of vertical logistics and manufacturing space, the Allen Group said in a statement. And it added that it is adjacent to Class I railroad carrier Union Pacific’s intermodal Facility, the BNSF rail line, major highway connectors—I-20, I-35, I-45 and the proposed Loop 9—and Lancaster Executive Airport, which is in the master plan stages to facilitate cargo distribution.

The Allen Group added that the DLH will serve as a major inland port bringing products by rail from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, including the Ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach and Houston and the western deep water ports in Mexico for regional and national distribution.

Dan McAuliffe, vice president for The Allen Group’s Texas management team, toldLogistics Management that the DLH currently has the ability to accommodate companies with up to 1.1 million square feet available in several locations, as well as up to 2.2 million square feet in others.

“In a short period of time, we will begin development of our first phase of public infrastructure, which will open up more than 750 acres of land,” said McAuliffe. He also noted that development for the DLH is part of four different cities—Dallas, Lancaster, Wilmer, and Hutchins.

McAuliffe explained that the DLH will provide shippers with several benefits for importing and exporting freight, with the most notable one being its close proximity to an intermodal facility.

“Once a container is unloaded from a train to a trailer chassis, the haul to the warehouse [drayage] can in some cases be more than $2.75 per mile,” he said. “When you evaluate the additional operating cost of a facility that is located 20 miles from the intermodal facility, the annual drayage costs could be equal to the rent paid on the warehouse.”

Other shipper benefits cited by McAuliffe were the DLH’s close proximity to major highways in Texas, and dual Class I railroad carriers, which he said would make the DLH the only industrial park in North America with dual Class I intermodal facilities that would give shippers greater flexibility and a higher level of service.

Along with these benefits, McAuliffe also pointed out that the DLH is built on inexpensive and available land, noting that prices for full-developed industrial land in other Dallas-based industrial parks are more than 150 percent higher than similar land at the DLH. And he also said that the opportunities for a 100-acre or more industrial user in a high quality industrial park are very limited in other locations throughout the Dallas-Forth Worth market.