Triad lands FedEx Ground

FedEx Ground Package System Inc. said yesterday that it will build a $100 million regional distribution hub in Triad Business Park, employing 750 people when it opens by summer 2011.

The 400,000-square-foot hub will be built at Old Greensboro Road and West Market Street in Guilford County, within the Kernersville town limits. Kernersville annexed the park earlier this year.

Initial preparation of the land started yesterday, and major construction will start in the spring.

"Enhancing our distribution capability in the Southeast is an important step in our ongoing efforts to increase the size, speed and efficiency of our network," John Payne, a vice president for FedEx Ground, said in a statement. "This new facility will be evidence of the Southeast region's growing presence in the distribution and logistics business, and will help us meet the growing demand of local shippers as we transport shipments across the country."

The announcement came after months of optimistic but cautious waiting by local government and economic-development officials to see if the park would beat out sites in Tennessee and South Carolina.

Just last month, a company spokesman for FedEx Ground had said that the shipping center was not a done deal. At the time, the company had just bought a 125-acre site in Triad Business Park but still had to get through the zoning and permit process.

Dan Lynch, the president of the Greensboro Economic Development Alliance, had a pretty good idea about a week ago that FedEx Ground, a division of FedEx Corp., definitely wanted to build in Triad Business Park.

Lynch was among 60 or so people, including local and state government and FedEx Ground officials, on hand yesterday at a groundbreaking for the distribution hub in the park.

"They wanted to go ahead and have the groundbreaking now before they got too much closer to the holiday season, and it would be more difficult," Lynch said in an interview.

Triad Business Park is managed and under development by Samet Corp. of Greensboro and owned by TDO Land Holding LLC.

The City-County Utility Commission will provide water service to the park, and High Point will provide sanitary-sewer service through a deal with Kernersville.

Lynch is impressed with FedEx Ground's commitment to invest so much money and create several hundred jobs in this area given the slowdown in the national economy.

Kernersville Alderman Kevin Bugg said that the hub is a sign of hope for the Triad economy.

"FedEx is a first-class corporation," Bugg said. "The jobs they are going to bring are endless. We are a logistics town with Roadway and some other logistic companies here, and this is a welcome addition."

The FedEx Ground hub will open with 500 full- and part-time employees, of which about 150 will be new positions. An additional 250 employees will be independent contractors, of which 150 will be newly created positions for the hub.

The company will move the operations of two of its Winston-Salem locations into the new hub, including its terminal in Union Cross Business Park.The company expects to add another 260 full- and part-time employees and around 200 independent contractors after the hub has been open four years.

Payne said that FedEx Ground is putting its hub in Triad Business Park because the park is well situated to serve the entire Southeast region.

"It's the highway network," he said. "As far as the logistics of our network and what we need to do to serve our terminals, we've got a major local terminal presence in North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina, and it allows us to provide logistics to continue to grow. We're planning long-term growth of the network, and the positioning of this hub is essential for us."

The company has hubs in Charlotte, Nashville, Tenn., and Orlando, Fla. The Kernersville hub, which will be one of the company's most modern, will cover Eastern North Carolina and parts of Virginia. It will process about 15,000 packages an hour when it opens and is projected to handle about 45,000 packages an hour at full capacity.

FedEx Ground, based in Pittsburgh, Pa., specializes in small-package ground shipping, business-to-business delivery and residential service and has more than 500 distribution hubs and local pickup-and-delivery terminals throughout the United States and Canada. The company reported revenue of $6.7 billion in its fiscal year 2008.

Guilford County commissioners voted in July to give nearly $1 million to the company if it brought up to 470 jobs to the area over the next six years.

FedEx Ground said that the overall incentives and assistance that it received from local and state agencies, as well as Duke Energy Corp., was about $2.6 million to $3.7 million.

■ Fran Daniel can be reached at 727-7366 or at fdaniel@wsjournal.com.