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Examining Job And Traffic Numbers For Winter Haven CSX Hub

Posted Mar 30, 2007 by Billy Townsend

Updated Mar 30, 2007 at 02:26 PM

Here are a couple of important numbers related to the CSX railroad logistics center planned for Winter Haven.

The first is 8,500. That’s the figure CSX and Winter Haven officials have often touted in predicting the how many jobs the center would create at full build-out. If correct, that number would make the CSX center Polk’s second largest employer, ahead of Publix and behind only the public schools.

But that number – 8,500—requires quite a bit of context. As CSX’s projections make clear, the 300-acre train-to-truck yard, which makes up the first phase of the project, will employ 200 people when it’s built, likely in 2009.  Another 1,800 jobs are projected for the 900-acre second phase, which will consist mostly of warehouse and office space operated by companies that rent from CSX. That’s it for direct employment at the center.

If you’re counting, that brings us to 2,000 mostly warehouse jobs. That would make the CSX center a top-15 Polk employer, but not the giant suggested by 8,500 jobs.

So where are the other 6,500 jobs?

They are far more theoretical. CSX labels them as “employment outside the park.” They are either employees of suppliers for companies located in the park, or “employees whose work depends on income generated directly or indirectly at the park.” CSX uses restaurant and convenience store workers as examples of that second group.

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Our next number is 1,150. That’s the number of daily truck trips onto State Road 60 that CSX expects the
first phase of the project to create. Winter Haven city planners say that should not affect the level of service on State Road 60.

They were not required to – and didn’t – project impact on U.S. 27 or U.S. 98 (Bartow Road). Those two highways are virtually the only logical way for a truck to get from S.R. 60 to the Polk Parkway or Interstate 4. Several stretches of U.S. 98 are considered failing today.

That 1,150 does not include the traffic that would be generated by the second, more warehouse-intensive phase of the project. All of that helps show why Winter Haven and Polk County officials are so enthusiastic about the proposed Heartland Parkway, which would tie almost directly into the CSX center.

Nowhere in the project or development files could I find a detailed projection of train traffic. No one I’ve talked to about this, from CSX officials to Lakeland officials to Pete Chichetto, who is shepherding the project for the city of Winter Haven, has been able to lay out the train traffic impact on central Lakeland, which appears to be on the main approach line to the center, or even to the center itself.

The information vacuum is making some people in Lakeland anxious. Developer Jerry Herring, who is building a new condominium project just feet from the downtown line, said he’s disappointed that no one from CSX has laid out what the city can expect.

“There needs to be a dialogue with the community,” Herring said. 

Chichetto said Friday he would seek detailed train traffic information from CSX in the hope of easing concerns.