Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) has certified its first nine "site-ready" rail-served locations across North America for potential industrial or logistics development, including sites in Alberta and Quebec.

Calgary-headquartered CPKC, created via the April 2023 merger of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern, is the only single-line transnational railway linking Canada, the United States and Mexico. The line stretches approximately 32,000 kms.

The site-ready program was created shortly after the merger with the goal of transforming underutilized land into prime industrial sites.

“We've got people that are regionally based across the U.S. and Canada and try to stay in close contact with local developers and economic and business development organizations to understand where our customers are telling us that we need strategic land acquisitions, or where they would like to have something located,” CPKC managing director of business development and transload Eric Goodman told RENX. 

“We take that information and go through our internal vetting process to make sure that these sites are ones that we have the ability to adequately provide service for.”

The site-ready locations, developed and certified in collaboration with third-party global engineering and construction firm Burns & McDonnell, are selected to support long-term operational success by offering reduced development timelines, built-in rail access and larger acreages.

“Burns & McDonnell helps us look at these sites and make sure that they’re truly good sites because we want to make sure what we're offering our customers and putting in the marketplace is something that's going to work to our advantage, has good support from our operations team and is going to push job creation and increase local investment,” Goodman explained.

Next steps for site-ready locations

Some of the first nine site-ready locations are owned by CPKC while others are owned by third-party developers or local communities. Developers that own sites are responsible for developing them, but with input from CPKC.

CPKC will provide support to make sure environmental baseline assessments and geotechnical engineering work are done. It will also help ensure there’s adequate and properly located road, water, sewer, gas, electricity and fibre infrastructure in place.

“We're helping guide their master-planning so that if they're going to bring in a customer that doesn't need rail service, they don't put it next to the rail because that property is at a premium,” Goodman said. 

Whether CPKC provides financial investment or not is determined on a case-by-case basis.

“If we get a customer that's going to bring us a significant amount of volume over a long period of time, we can look at doing something like that,” Goodman said. “But as a plan right now, anything that has to be done from a rail infrastructure standpoint will be paid for by the developer.”

Shepard Logistics Centre

CPKC’s site selection program rates the properties by gold, silver and bronze status based on speed to market and regional opportunity. 

Calgary’s 1,300-acre Shepard Logistics Centre has gold status because it has all the necessary approvals and permitting to move forward right away. It can host 20 million square feet of industrial development and has 200 rail-to-truck transload spots.

Shepard Logistics Centre can accommodate projects requiring more than 100 acres and is targeting distribution, transload, food processing, cold-storage and manufacturing tenants that depend on rail.

“I know at least four or five different customers that are looking at it,” Goodman said.

Shepard Logistics Centre is 3.2 kilometres east of Calgary’s ring road, 7.8 kilometres from CPKC’s intermodal ramp, 15.5 kilometres from CPKC’s Calgary rail yard and 25.8 kilometres from CN’s intermodal ramp.

“They've got a rather unique situation where they can not only support direct rail customers, where the rail cars go directly into a building or a structure or a site, but can also have customers that need intermodal service,” Goodman explained.

“They may be able to bring containers in from ports on the west coast or the east coast and bring them into Calgary, and then take them into a warehouse for distribution — not only locally, but across Canada.” 

Shepard Logistics Centre is owned by The Simpson Group of Companies and affiliated with CANA Group of Companies. The Alberta-based, Simpson family-owned and managed group provides services in project management, commercial and infrastructure construction, land development and agricultural operations.

Les Cedres Complex

CPKC owns the 754-acre Les Cedres Complex, located about 50 kilometres southwest of Montreal near the St. Lawrence River, which has bronze status. 

“We haven't gone through all of the diligence yet,” Goodman said of the site. “We’re trying to wait for a customer that's interested in it.

“Doing an environmental baseline assessment and a geotechnical survey on a 754-acre site takes a lot of capital investment so we're going to do that when we need to.”

There’s already some rail infrastructure on the site and Goodman said it could be elevated to gold status pretty quickly if the right tenant comes along.

Future site-ready locations

Another 16 locations in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are being considered for the site ready program.

“We want to make sure we have the ability to capitalize on being the only railroad that connects the U.S., Canada and Mexico,” Goodman said. “How can we drive commerce between those three countries in spite of all the noise going on right now about tariffs? 

“How can we position these strategic land assets in order to build commerce, drive growth and do the things we said we were going to do when this company merged two years ago?”

The goal is to have about 12 more sites certified this year. 

“It takes a good 90 to 120 days to do the due diligence necessary on these sites and double-check that everything somebody submits is there, because we're in a position of trust but verify,” he said.