Urban gardens fall to new construction
Growers sow seeds of own downfall
OMAHA, Neb. — After four years of growing and selling produce in the heart of Omaha, Ali Clark has become an expert at yanking out her black raspberry bushes and replanting them at another site.
It’s a prickly chore Clark loathes but one she can’t avoid as her Big Muddy Urban Farm has had to move from one vacant lot to another even though the business was thriving.
Urban farms like Clark’s are being evicted from center cities across the nation where they’ve become a much-remarked-on driver of urban revival in recent years, having brought healthy food, commerce and eye-pleasing greenery to dreary neighborhoods. During the recession, downtown landowners and leaders offered up plots for free to get new vitality on empty streets.
Now the thriving farms are being routed by another urban phenomenon: the hordes of people moving back downtown to live, which is turning green spaces into prime real estate. Plots where low-income residents raised vegetables, where community groups trained at-risk youth and where small garden businesses took root are being snapped up for construction of new apartments and townhouses.
“You have to plant as if you’re going to be there 10 years, even if you know it probably won’t work that way,” said Clark, a co-founder of Big Muddy Urban Farm. She added, “It stinks to put in the time in an investment that doesn’t last.”
The evictions are sad but inevitable, said Amy Brendmoen, a City Council member in St. Paul, Minn., which recently booted an urban
The subsidiaries — ABF Logistics, Panther Premium Logistics, FleetNet and ABF Moving — form what ArcBest calls its asset-light businesses. Acquisitions and other investments in the businesses have affected ArcBest’s revenue growth the past few years. They combined for 11 percent of revenue in 2010, 19 percent in 2012 and 27 percent in 2014.
Brad Delco, an analyst for Stephens Inc. in Little Rock, said the continued merger of both sides of the transportation industry will help “diversify” ArcBest.
“It creates some flexibility,” Delco said. “It creates less cyclical extremes in the business. And from a carrier like ArcBest that has relationships with tens of thousands of customers, it’s another way of selling a service that could be very complimentary to what they’re doing to
begin with.”
ArcBest has highlighted collaborative cross-selling in presentations the past year, noting that its own research indicated 75 percent of the 40,000 active ABF Freight and Panther customers have two or more logistics needs within its family of companies. In addition, 85 percent of of ABF Freight and Panther customers said they would consider using one of the other services ArcBest’s companies offer.
ArcBest also plans to reach its revenue goals by developing services and resources in the maintenance and moving markets. FleetNet, which McReynolds described as AAA for trucking, has contributed $129.7 million in revenue through three quarters of 2015. ABF Moving has accounted for $93.9 million in revenue over the same period.
David Cobb, the company’s chief financial officer, said during the Stephens Investment Conference that organic growth opportunities are another
solution for growth. He said ArcBest can improve “efficiencies and effectiveness in our current operations by some investments that we’re making — technology, replacement equipment.”
ArcBest estimated spending between $1 million to $2 million on enterprise solution investments in both the second and third quarters of 2015, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company will consider other acquisitions, as well. ArcBest purchased Panther Premium in 2012 and acquired Oklahoma-based Smart Lines Transportation in January.
“It would help us with scale in the business to make an acquisition,” McReynolds said of future acquisitions. “It would also help us with locations and people. So it’s something that, in addition to the huge efforts we’re making on the organic side, it would really be a helpful thing to accomplish.”
McReynolds said ArcBest doesn’t know when it would
make another acquisition, but it is “actively” looking for targets. The company projects $150 million to $200 million in acquisitions by 2018.
ArcBest believes the complete road map for growth among the asset-light businesses will help the company move from $2.6 billion in revenue to $3.7 billion in 2018. But Delco said ArcBest’s plans to grow the subsidiaries aren’t an indication the company is leaving ABF Freight behind.
“It’s the core business of ArcBest,” Delco said. “I think it’s a way of leveraging goodwill with customers that have been created over a 90-year legacy. So I don’t know if it’s less of an emphasis on LTL [less-than-truckload]. It’s more of, as a capitalist you have to employ assets and efforts in an area that’s going to generate the best returns. That’s a fiduciary duty of the board and the management team. Right now their best emphasis and focus should remain on the nonasset portion of their business.”