Chinese conglomerate eyes West Park investment

A Chinese conglomerate with $4 billion in yearly sales could help finance rail improvements for a West Park industrial complex near Crows Landing.

"We like large infrastructure projects like this," said Jeffrey Klein, a director with Beijing Construction Engineering Group. "What Gerry (Kamilos) has expressed as his vision would be a great project."

Stanislaus County's application for a $27 million federal transportation grant for West Park, obtained by The Bee, lists Beijing Construction Engineering Group as Kamilos' previously unidentified private investor on the hook for an additional $27 million match.

Kamilos and Klein on Thursday confirmed the potential partnership.

"They are a substantial construction company," said Kamilos, who envisions shipping valley produce on rail cars to the Port of Oakland and the Pacific Rim, with Asian imports coming the other way.

BCEG has a financing division that would be repaid as West Park makes money. The company's Web site says it employs 68,000 people and has workers on all continents, including Antarctica, and has assets of $1 billion. Subsidiaries include research and development, industrial production and property management. But the company's bread and butter is construction. Projects include Olympic venues, subways, bridges, manufacturing plants and sewage treatment plants.

In California, the company built apartments in Riverside and Tarzan's Treehouse at Disneyland.

The county submitted its Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant application Monday. If successful, the total $54 million would help improve the congested Niles Canyon rail junction in Fremont, the Lyoth junction near Tracy and rail configurations at the former air base in Crows Landing.

"This project has the potential to change and significantly diversify our local and regional economies," a narrative from the application reads.

West Park previously snagged a $22 million state commitment in Trade Corridor Infrastructure Funds, but the time-sensitive grant slipped to "tier 2" status because Kamilos has not produced an agreement with Union Pacific Railroad and an environmental impact report. He will meet a June deadline set by county leaders, he reaffirmed Thursday.

Keith Boggs, a county deputy executive officer, was less than optimistic about the state grant, however, in a quarterly briefing this week to county supervisors. He noted "a very strong likelihood" that the state won't have enough money even if Kamilos does his part.

Also, delays are "very unattractive to the (California) Transportation Commission," Boggs wrote.

The federal grant application says Kamilos would save $20 million in construction costs by using an old air base runway as a 150-acre inland port, transferring freight containers between rail cars and trucks using nearby Interstate 5.

"This could arguably be one of the most significant concrete recycling efforts ever in the state of California," the narrative reads.

The inland port could save trucks from traveling 23 million miles each year, negating crashes costing about $4.6 million, the document says. It estimates total public benefits at more than $100 million per year.

On the Net: www.beijingconstructionusa.com/Home.html

Bee staff writer Garth Stapley can be reached at gstapley@modbee.com or (209) 578-2390.