Once regarded by developers as unsightly, dirty, nasty and contaminated, Illinois Route 3 today is being actively redeveloped, promising site selectors and end users an abundance of locations girded by roads, bridges, ports, rail systems and more.
BARBERMURPHY Principal and industrial broker Steve Zuber, who has worked the Route 3 multimodal logistics corridor from Alton south to Dupo – some 60 miles – for 15 years now says what’s been accomplished in the past 10 years is nothing short of phenomenal.
“Many have considered this area in the past as unsightly, dirty, nasty, contaminated and unsafe and have thumbed their nose in our direction,” said Zuber. “I’ve always seen it as a diamond in the rough. As I look at the landscape of Illinois Route 3 today, I see the majority of these legacy properties have either been demolished, repurposed or redeveloped, and the corridor is really starting to sparkle.”
Gone are many dilapidated, vacant industrial buildings, their sites being remediated and redeveloped. Thanks to the Terminal Railroad Association’s purchase of portions of the former 650-acre National City Stockyards site in (YEAR), vacant industrial buildings – the Armour meat-packing plant in Fairmont City – have been demolished and ground is being redeveloped for new users. The Illinois Dept. of Transportation is injecting more than $200 million into sections of the Route 3 corridor over the next several years.