By Scott Schumaker | YourValley
Mesa City Council last week approved the sale of 5 acres of city-owned land for $1.78 million to Union Pacific Railroad to make way for a planned 6-mile spur railway through the Pecos Road manufacturing corridor.
The Pecos Industrial Rail Access and Train Extension (PIRATE) project would run east from an existing railway along Rittenhouse Road out to the CMC Steel plant on Meridian Road.
CMC Steel, which recycles scrap metal into new steel products like rebar, is Union Pacific’s “anchor customer,” but the idea is for other industrial operations along Pecos Road to eventually access the rail.
Mesa City Council last week approved the sale of 5 acres of city-owned land for $1.78 million to Union Pacific Railroad to make way for a planned 6-mile spur railway through the Pecos Road manufacturing corridor.
The Pecos Industrial Rail Access and Train Extension (PIRATE) project would run east from an existing railway along Rittenhouse Road out to the CMC Steel plant on Meridian Road.
CMC Steel, which recycles scrap metal into new steel products like rebar, is Union Pacific’s “anchor customer,” but the idea is for other industrial operations along Pecos Road to eventually access the rail.
The city owns 35 acres in a critical area for PIRATE to proceed, close to where the spur would join with the existing rail line.
The strip of land approved for sale will bisect Mesa’s 35 acres at the corner of Pecos and Sossaman, which the city has owned for 80 years.
