ENID, Okla. — Transportation Partners and Logistics is now the largest storage and distribution company for wind components in the United States, Enid Regional Development Alliance Board learned in a meeting Thursday.
“A lot of that’s because of Enid. They purchased an additional 80 acres and are looking to expand into that area — looking at some new buildings out on 66th Street, now that that’s been approved,” ERDA Executive Director Brent Kisling said. “They have become a very big player in the United States.”
Wyoming-based Transportation Partners and Logistics operates a transloading facility for wind turbine equipment on the northeast corner of 66th and Chestnut. The company only operates in parts for turbines in Oklahoma — not building wind turbines — and transporting and storing the eight components needed to build on, said Billy Brenton, vice president of the company, said in an interview with the News & Eagle last year.
“This facility will be a busy yard for four years just based on one customer,” Brenton said. “At the height of last summer, we had 132 people out there working and of that a good portion were trucking, which means they were eating in restaurants, staying in hotels and spending money here.”
According to the company’s website, the local facility has 180 acres of outdoor storage space, as well as 120,000-square-feet of indoor storage space. It has 8,000 feet of railroad track served by BNSF Railways.
TP&L also has rail distribution facilities in Garden City, Kan.; Grand Forks, N.D.; Casper, Wyo.; and O’Neill, Neb.
In other business, the board heard an update on Spotted Cow Packaging plans. The company, which is currently located in the business incubator, does co-packing and some food preparation.
Negotiations on a building on Cottonwood did not work out, Kisling told the board.
“We’re looking at some other options here in the community,” he said. “We have a company that is in the process of building a number of buildings in our industrial park out on 54th Street. We approached them about the potential of adding one more building to their mix.”
Some bids received earlier this week had good numbers, Kisling said. There could be a final contract for consideration as early as the board’s meeting in June, he said.
ERDA discussed the project in greater detail in executive session, which is closed to the public.
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Miller is city reporter for the Enid News & Eagle. She can be reached at jmiller@enidnews.com.