Operating a warehouse is relatively cheap and Hanjin’s departure from Port of Portland is “not necessarily a deal-breaker.”
BY JACOB PALMER | DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
A national site-selection consultant ranked Springfield in the top 25 most logistics-friendly cities in the nation.
Operating a 500,000-square-foot warehouse would be relatively cheap due to low labor, energy costs, OregonLive.com reports.
“Operating costs play a definitive role in the site-selection process today,” John Boyd, a principal at the Boyd Co. Inc., said in Elliot Njus’ story. “The reality is the cost in Portland would be 15 to 20 percent higher than in Springfield.”
The city’s relative proximity to Portland would be a benefit for transporting goods via rail. For exports that need to travel overseas, shipping the goods up to Seattle wouldn’t “necessarily be a deal killer,” Njus reports.
Springfield already has a major distribution center in True Value, whose 600,000 square foot center supplies stores up and down the West Coast. It employs about 185, said John Tamulonis, Springfield’s community development manager.
Strategically placed distribution and fulfillment centers are growing ever more important with the rise of e-commerce. And as more major retailers are working on building up the infrastructure for same-day delivery of items are ordered online, they’re moving toward building more smaller distribution centers. Ultimately, Springfield’s same-day access to the population center in Portland — but lower operating costs — might prove to be a boon for the city, Boyd said.
A key theme in the article is that the Port of Portland’s container terminal woes will not have a long term economic impact. Economist Joe Cortright made a similar argument in his column, “How Oregon will survive the loss of Hanjin,” in the March issue of Oregon Business.
