trinity-rail-A Dallas company has canceled plans to build a nearly 31 million dollar rail car maintenance facility in Sioux City. City Manager Bob Padmore says Trinity Rail officials confirmed their decision earlier this month.

Padmore says company officials flew up to Sioux City and met with city officials and told them the changing environment in the oil industry and the shipping of crude from the Bakken fields no longer made it viable to continue with the project.

Trinity Rail announced the Sioux City expansion in October 2014, but construction never really got underway as demand for tankers soon dropped sharply as global prices for crude oil collapsed.

The 150,000 square-foot facility was supposed to create 250 new jobs including 160 that would pay $16.63  an hour and state officials approved tax credits for the project. Sioux City has a drop and pull rail yard next to the site where Trinity was going to build.

Padmore says the city is actively shopping that site to other potential developers. Padmore hopes if conditions change, Trinity would reconsider building in Sioux City. “If things rebound and they decided they want to make an expansion in rail car maintenance, that they would come back and talk to us in Sioux City. I think we presented ourselves very favorably. I think they put us at the top of their list for a reason, and I think they would come back and talk to us,” Padmore says.

Trinity Rail is a subsidiary of Trinity Industries, a Dallas-based conglomerate.

(Reporting by Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City)