How McAdam plans to become a railway hub again
CBC
Ken Stannix saw a community in economic decline when he retired from a career in the military and moved home to McAdam in 2012.
It got even more challenging when the local wallboard plant shut down in 2021.
By then, Stannix was mayor of the southwest New Brunswick village and had made economic development a priority.
He spotted an opportunity to revive a once-thriving railway industry, building on the growth that’s happening down the line at Port Saint John.
“About six years ago we heard that the port expansion was in the planning phase and that was going to be starting,” Stannix said.
“We got a hold of [port officials] and asked if there was anything that McAdam could do to assist down the way, and they said maybe take a look at ‘inland ports’ and see how they work.
“With the growth that's going on in Saint John, there's the potential for rebirth of the village.”
The port was just embarking on a plan that would see it spend nearly $250 million to upgrade and expand port facilities at its west side container terminal.
Since then, it has added a berth, deepened and widened the channel and brought in new cranes to offload more and larger ships.
The port has quadrupled its yearly shipping capacity to more than 800,000 TEUs, which stands for twenty-foot equivalent units, the standard unit for measuring cargo capacity.
To reach its growth targets, CEO Craig Bell Estabrooks says it could use an inland logistics and distribution hub on the rail line to Quebec and Ontario, serviced by its partners, Irving-owned New Brunswick Southern Railway and Calgary-based Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd., or CPKC.
Bell Estabrooks said the port doesn’t have enough land on the rail line to keep growing, opening up opportunities for other communities.
“McAdam makes a lot of sense because there's availability of land, but it's also where NB Southern turns the containers over to CPKC,” he said.
“So if it's CPKC cargo, McAdam could be a great opportunity for warehousing and a bit of a logistics hub."
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