Expansive Port Alabama Industrial Center Being Built in Loxley
LOXLEY, Ala.
August 22, 2024
Another new project is coming to the City of Loxley, and this is going to be a big one!
The new complex, called the Port Alabama Industrial Center is being built on a 902-acre site at the southwest corner of Interstate-10 and Highway 59 on what was previously Corte family farmland.
This sprawling complex will employ more than 700 workers and add to the already growing number of warehouse and distribution centers in the city.
In some major economic news for South Alabama, a huge inland port broke ground in Loxley on Wednesday, August 21, 2024. The 902-acre site is at the southwest corner of Interstate-10 and Highway 59 on what was previously Corte family farmland. The site will address a desperate need for industry in South Alabama.
“Here in Baldwin County, you’re really servicing not just the community, not just Baldwin County, but more of a region, the gulf coast and the larger southeast region from Jacksonville to Houston to Nashville and Atlanta and so, with the drivers that are already in the market and given the site and location, we feel like we’re very positioned in a great spot to deliver demand that’s coming,” Gulf Corp CEO, Austin Ames said.
From Loxley, merchandise can easily be shuttled to or from rail or port in Mobile and driven East or West on Interstate 10 or Northbound on Interstate 65.
The 12-million square feet of Class A industrial space will make it a prime site for everything from container storage and logistics to other industrial and light manufacturing demands.
Much of that demand is already here and the Port of Mobile will be one of the earliest and largest benefactors of the warehousing space that is coming. There’s already a shortage of local storage space to hold containers which come through the fastest growing container port in the country and that inventory will only increase as the port expands.
“Based on the port capacity, we’re already seven to nine million square feet short in our market…both Mobile, Baldwin counties, to capture the port’s volume and the economic drivers like Novelis and Airbus that are putting off opportunities that are literally leaking out of our market, so we’re already that many square feet shy and every bit of square feet we’ve put in Loxley over the last several years is full,” explained president of Baldwin County Economic Development Alliance, Lee Lawson.
Port Alabama Industrial Center is essentially an inland port where the logistics of storing and transporting goods happen. Aside from the enormous amount of warehousing, there will also be office space built in over the three phases of construction.
And more companies than ever are eying the area as a prime transportation and distribution center which is very good for Baldwin County.
The property about to be developed hasn’t changed hands since the mid-1800s and it’s not somewhere Forrest Corte or his mother, Delores thought they’d ever be.
“You just think when you come from five, six generations of farming, you’ll be doing it forever and my son, he graduated and he’s a computer engineer and I don’t think he’s too interested in the farming life,” Forrest Corte said.
The farming life isn’t over for this side of the Corte family just yet. With still a thousand or so acres of fields left to plant and graze, Corte said the tractors won’t sit idle.
While the initial plans are on paper, and construction is soon to begin, future plans for expansions and its uses could see a wide variety of businesses moving into the area.
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