Cargo Roundup.

Kansas City tries to make the leap from cow town to trade hub for North America.

GEORGE BLACKWOOD HAS BIG plans for Kansas City. The city, located almost smack dab in the middle of the continental United States, is as far from any international border as one can get. But the 59-year-old politician and other like-minded civic boosters are determined to turn the old home of the great Western cattle drives into one of North America's biggest trade hubs.

The ambitious goal is still little more than a pipe dream, but the effort reflects how international trade is penetrating deep into the heart of the United States. "We're still a long way 6ff," admits Blackwood. But, he adds, "No one has come forward and said, 'What a stupid idea"'

That's because international trade is growing rapidly in the area surrounding Kansas City, which sprawls across the border of Kansas and Missouri. From 1995 t6 1997, the two states' total trade with Canada and Mexico grew by half to US$7.7 billion. Most of the cargo is coming and going from the North, but a series of new projects could boost trade with Mexico.

The proposed North American superhighway calls for the conversion of Interstates 35 and 29 and the connecting Mexican and Canadian highways into a high-tech "smart" roadway to handle very large volumes of truck traffic. The U.S. portion of this project would cost about $6 billion and would feed freight to a separate project to convert a little-used airport on the southern fringes of Kansas City into a major rail and truck distribution center.

Kansas City Southern Railways would lease the money-losing airport from the local port authority and initially invest about $35 million to convert it. The company is part owner, along with Transportaci6n Maritima Mexicana, of railroads reaching down through Texas into central Mexico. In April of last year, KCS signed a 15-year marketing agreement with Canadian National Railway Co. and Illinois Central Corp. to create a unified freight market stretching from Canada to Mexico.

Blackwood, a city council member, took responsibility for herding the airport conversion proposal through the local legislature. He says the consensus behind both proposals within the city government is solid. "I can't point to anyone right now who is opposed," Blackwood says.

Belton goes global. A small but vocal group of private citizens emerged during public hearings last year on the intermodal facility, as it is called. Instead of local labor unions worried about jobs heading south of the border, the opposition consists mostly of pilots who don't want the airport closed, and nearby residents who raised the specter of a flood of illegal immigrants and drugs seeping through their neighborhoods. "You can expect more drugs," said one resident, Lester Young, during one of the public hearings held at the proposed hub site. "Narco-trafficking has corrupted the entire Mexican society and U.S. Customs."

Teresa Loar, the city council member who chaired the public hearings, says, "Anytime you have a project that impedes on people's communities, they're going to react." But the argument against the project has failed to gain steam. Kansas City held mayoral elections at the end of March and only one of the six candidates expressed open hostility toward making the city a trade hub.

"As the economy goes global, we have to be a part of it," says Art Ruiz, executive director of the Economic Development Corporation in Belton, a town of 18,000 located next to the old airport. Ruiz and others went on a fact-finding mission to Mexico last year and are now finalizing plans to twin with Manzanillo, a town in northern Mexico with 100,000 inhabitants. He expects the freight facility to spark the development of light manufacturing and distribution companies in Belton.

The cargo hub proposal first crystallized after Kansas City Southern Railways floated the idea that it might be cheaper to ship goods from Europe and Asia to the U.S. via Mexico. Ships would likely dock at a port in northwestern Mexico, such as Topolobampo, rather than Los Angeles, and cargo would be loaded onto trains that would bring it into KSC's system. "It's more of a long-term possibility," admits Bill Galligan, a spokesman for the railroad. "It's always been a dream."