Rail Work Underway at Camp Howze Industrial Park, With First Customer Signed

Construction is underway on the BNSF Railway connection that will serve Camp Howze Industrial Rail Park at Interstate 35 and U.S. Highway 82, and Gainesville says the site has already attracted its first customer, Buzzi Unicem Cement. The city's June 18 release puts the start of direct rail service in the second quarter of 2027.

Stream Realty Partners, the Dallas firm handling leasing, announced the groundbreaking June 22 and describes the property as a 489-acre master-planned development with room for roughly 7 million square feet of industrial space in as many as 14 buildings. Stream says it leads leasing for B-29 Investments with Hughes Commercial and is marketing to logistics, manufacturing and distribution users.

A May 15 city manager's staff report said BNSF had broken ground on a parallel track for the site. The city also describes a transload yard of more than 30 acres, where freight moves between railcars and trucks, and a freight-forwarding building of about 200,000 square feet.

Public descriptions of the site's acreage differ. The Gainesville Economic Development Corp. markets the park at 480 acres and lists it as a BNSF Certified Site with city water and wastewater, Pentex or Oncor power and Nortex fiber. BNSF's own certified-sites list puts the certified portion at 126 acres. The railroad says certification can cut six to nine months off construction.

City Manager Barry Sullivan said in the city release that a rail-served park can broaden the industrial tax base and lighten the load on residential taxpayers. BNSF economic development vice president Scott Bates said in the same release that rail can lower transportation costs and reduce road congestion by moving freight more efficiently.

The rail work sits alongside a separate city-backed crossing-improvement proposal. Council members voted 6-0 on June 2, with one absent, to support grant applications for a roughly $57 million Heartland Flyer Corridor program that would replace the FM 1202 crossing with a bridge, eliminate five at-grade crossings and upgrade seven more. The packet puts the city's share near $1.8 million, with BNSF, TxDOT and Camp Howze covering the rest, and says Gainesville is not obligated to accept an award.

Whether that federal money arrives is unsettled. Federal Railroad Administration partnership selections updated Aug. 14 do not list Gainesville or FM 1202, though they include a much larger award for crossing work in Fort Worth, Dallas and Terrell. The agency's crossing-safety and CRISI pages still show the current rounds as available funding rather than named recipients.

No tenant building has surfaced in state records. A search of Texas architectural-barriers filings for Gainesville projects registered Jan. 1 through Aug. 12 turned up nothing tied to the park. Sitework, utility extensions, tenant announcements and city permit reports are where progress would show next.

The name goes back to the 31,000-acre Army camp bought outside Gainesville in 1941 for infantry training and closed in 1946, according to the Corps of Engineers.