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Sunset Transportation Inc. and Missouri real estate developer McEagle Properties LLC - will lease 25,354 square feet of the
building for eight years.
McEagle Properties is also the developer of the 76-acre tract just north of Lambert Airport.
Brian Kinsey, marketing and properties manager for Lambert, says the tract will not be dedicated solely to cargo but will
be multi-use.
"There will be other aviation-related activities on those 76 acres as well," Kinsey said. "The part of that development
that will be devoted to cargo will most likely be to increase the capacity of the air cargo carriers we already have (at
Lambert) and to provide for any growth in their business."
The following air cargo carriers currently fly in and out of Lambert: UPS, FedEx, ASTAR Air Cargo (formerly DHL Airways),
Air Transport International (formerly Burlington Air Express) and ABX Air (Airborne Express). Kinsey said these carriers
occupy 100 percent of Lambert's 127,000-square-foot air cargo facility. The airport's cargo building was built back in the
1980s.
"Tim Cantwell (director of MidAmerica St. Louis Airport) has developed the right business plan for that airport in terms
of cargo," said Kinsey. "MidAmerica certainly has a lot of capacity to offer, and what that airport is seeking to do is
probably best for its situation at this point in time," he added.
Kinsey said integrators - air cargo carriers who pick up the package at the sender's door and take it all the way to the
receiver's door without using any other shipping companies in between - take a lot of factors into consideration when they
decide where to operate.
"One thing that's a primary concern to them is being able to deliver on time," said Kinsey. "That's an advantage to
Lambert and a disadvantage to MidAmerica."
According to Cantwell, Trade Zone Partners' lease with MidAmerica is structured as an increasing rent charge with a
decreasing shared income for the airport. He says such is not uncommon for initial business set-ups.
Trade Zone Partners will pay MidAmerica a flat base rental fee of $10,000 in year one. In year two, TZP will pay $1.12
per square foot, $2.24 psf in year three, $3.36 psf in year four, $4.48 psf in year five, $5.60 psf in year six and $6 per
square foot in years seven through nine.
Cantwell says the Sept. 12 announcement of MidAmerica's first international cargo tenant is "another brick in the path of
economic enhancement" at the airport.
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"Joint use, passenger service, international air cargo, they're all equally important," said Cantwell. "Our aim is to
amass all the tools we can and to amass the critical mass of businesses and give them the best tools with which to be
successful here - and to host them in the best way we know how," he added.
A major step in amassing those resources, he says, included the expansion of Foreign Trade Zone No. 31 by nearly 5,000
acres in 2004 - an expansion that brought MidAmerica St. Louis Airport into the zone. What this means, Cantwell says, is
preferential duty treatment on cargo being flown into the airport from other countries that will be handled, assembled,
packaged or destroyed; the zone allows import duties to be delayed, reduced or possibly eliminated on those items.
Another tool in MidAmerica's cargo toolbox, according to Cantwell, is the cargo building itself.
"It has 37 truck docks and 10 air access doors," Cantwell said. "You won't find that large a building with that many
portholes anywhere in the area - it was built for speed," he added.
One more tool is soon to be completed, said Cantwell. That is the 2,600-square-foot, pre-fabricated U.S. Customs and
Border Protection office building that is being built offsite by Belleville-based Calhoun Construction Inc. and should be in
place and open by January 2007. The space will include office space, agricultural rooms to destroy necessary food and room
to test cargo, as well as space to process up to 19 people entering the country.
Cantwell is in agreement with Kinsey that Lambert's and MidAmerica's air cargo strategies are not set on a collision
course anytime soon. To illustrate his point that MidAmerica is sitting squarely in the pilot's seat when it comes to
attracting international air cargo business, Cantwell uses the example of how automotive and computer parts are currently
being flown from manufacturing plants to assembly lines across the U.S.
"Right now, if anyone sends a kind of product like that internationally, it will not fly out of the St. Louis region," he
said. "It is flying out of Chicago or Memphis, but not out of St. Louis (Lambert). There is no international cargo here. The
market is wide open for us."
David Miller, airport manager of St. Louis Regional Airport in Bethalto and East Alton, also commends Cantwell on
MidAmerica's cargo coup and says building tenancy requires give and take just as building any new business does.
"From the business sense, you have to do a lot of things to get something started," said Miller. "Certainly in the life
of an airport, you start turning over every rock you can find, especially in that stage in the life of an airport. From the
air cargo operator's perspective, he's enjoying a below-market land lease, but is he going to be able to afford that later
on? That's the ying and the yang of it. When you're in the start-up phase, it's all part of doing business."
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