The Port of New Orleans has bought a 210,000-square-foot warehouse at 5200 Coffee Drive in the Uptown section of its container terminal and leased the property to The Kearney Companies.
The port, an independent state body, said it paid $6.6 million for the facility, which it bought from Access World, a Switzerland-based logistics company that had been looking to sell the property for several years.
Port NOLA said it has initially leased the facility to The Kearney Companies, a New Orleans-based third-party logistics firm that was founded in the mid-1990s and was sold at the end of 2021 to Pittsburgh-based Precision Terminal Logistics. David Kearney remains as president of the firm.
The 10-year lease agreement is the culmination of a multi-year effort between Port NOLA and Access World to ensure the facility supports import and export growth, Port NOLA said in a statement on Tuesday.
New Investment
“As part of the lease, The Kearney Companies has committed to making capital investments through Port NOLA-approved facility upfits and improvements,” it said, adding that the investment will create 15 new full-time jobs at the facility.
In April, the port signed a similar deal with Kearney to extend for 10 years its lease of 286,000 square feet of warehouse space at the France Road and Jourdan Road facilities. That included a commitment to invest $450,000, primarily for dock doors and levelers, paving projects and lighting conversions to LED with an option to invest up to an additional $1 million to increase rail capacity on site.
With the new deal, Kearney’s operations with the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad, which Port NOLA also owns, have reached 3,000 carloads per year, and close to 20,000 containers.
David Kearney said the deal took years to negotiate because the parties had to “work through several long-term, difficult maintenance items, and future capital investments that are needed to ensure the future viability of this specific warehouse facility.”
He said they plan to work with Chicago and London metals exchanges’ customers who traditionally have used the facility, as well as look for new users.