Polk County Rail Hub

One of the bigger economic development stories to hit Winter Haven in a while is the proposed CSX Integrated Logistics Center. Numbers like $10.5 billion in economic impact and 8,500 jobs tend to get your attention. -- Empirical Polk

Final sale of 1,250 acres of the city's wastewater treatment property to CSX Transportation Inc. may be two years down the line, but city staff is already working on various steps in the process necessary to bring the distribution center here.

The first step is to rezone and change land use restrictions on the first 300 acres that is slated to be used for the integrated logistics center proposed by the railroad, said Pete Chichetto, the city's director of Development Services.

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In all, the proposed integrated logistics center planned by CSX Transportation Inc. is expected to create 2,000 jobs on site. While CSX has other facilities of this kind in the United States, the proposed Winter Haven site is the first in the Southeast, said Rick Hood, assistant vice president of CSX Real Property.

"Winter Haven was chosen because it is centrally located in Florida near a number of consumer markets," Hood said. "There's potentially 1,250 acres available under a single ownership. The entire 1,250 acres is also along our main rail line." -- The Lakeland Ledger