Switching tracks.

AuthorMartin, Edward
PositionNC TREND: Eastern Region

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The gamble was worth millions, and Norris Tolson and his Carolinas Gateway Partnership knew they risked not only losing a large industrial project but triggering neighbors' enmity. In July, though, when CSX Corp. announced it would build a $272 million intermodal cargo terminal in Rocky Mount, their bet paid off. The key was soft-pedaling in a hardball arena.

CSX revealed in early January it planned a terminal where cargo containers will come and go by rail and be transferred to trucks, some bound for North Carolina ports. The Jacksonville, Fla.-based railroad initially targeted nearby Johnston County, where property owners blasted the company for heavy-handed tactics including threats of invoking eminent domain to force land sales. The project generated stiff opposition from county commissioners and others. Gov. Pat McCrory, an initial champion of the project, declared the site "no longer a viable option."

The reception was different in Rocky Mount, where Gateway CEO Tolson was assembling a 710-acre site. Amid the Johnston County controversy, Gateway, a public-private organization that promotes industry in Nash and Edgecombe counties, contacted CSX.

"We were strongly in favor of the whole intermodal concept, and saw the difficulty they were having in Johnston," says Tolson, a former North Carolina secretary of commerce. "We said to CSX, we know the landowners here, so let us do the optioning process for you," Tolson says. CSX encouraged Gateway to secure options, though it was considering the Johnston site...

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