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Some in Levelland say the railroad is the future. For a long time the tracks were basically abandoned. But that was before Levelland had a product to ship; ethanol changed it all.
"We nearly lost our railroad and if you lose that you don't get to just build it back, so what we are expecting is a lot of unit trains coming in, we just need to see how it's going to develop," says Chris Roberts, member of the Levelland Industrial board.
They've been building the rail park for about year. It's not completely finished, but far enough along to generate a lot of interest from investors, says Dave Quinn with the rail park.
"We have one company that will be the first and they will be unloading corn," says Quinn. "They should bring in around $4 million of investments."
Money isn't the only positive the company is bringing to this community. Developers say this could impact several counties around Levelland.
"We hope to get at least one thousand jobs and hope for one hundred million dollars in investment on the tax ropes, but this is long terms it's not going to happen in one year or two years, but this is what we're shooting for," says Roberts.
The investment didn't come cheap, Roberts says the total cost is $8.6 million.
"We got $3.3 million from the federal government and we were able to put in a really first-class operation for a lot cheaper than even we thought.
Now that the industrial rail park will soon open economic developers hope there will be a steady traffic of trains by February.
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