News Release

BNSF, Hillwood and M.T. Cole Trust Expand Logistics Park—AllianceTexas® by 1,671 acres

FORT WORTH, Texas, November 18, 2004:

The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company (BNSF), Hillwood and the M.T. Cole Trust today announced plans to expand Logistics Park—AllianceTexas® by adding 327 acres of direct rail access for customers that load rail cars at their facilities. The direct rail access for carload customers is made possible through a larger joint development between Hillwood and the M.T. Cole Trust of 1,671 acres of land located northeast of BNSF’s existing intermodal facility.

"The ability to provide our carload customers with direct rail service is the one component missing in this industry-leading Logistics Park," says Fritz Draper, BNSF vice president, Business Development. "By adding this important component to Logistics Park—AllianceTexas, we will be able to provide our customers with a full suite of transportation options—intermodal, transload, automotive and carload service with distribution and warehousing—in one location."

Originally constructed as an automotive facility for the former Santa Fe Railway in 1990, Logistics Park—AllianceTexas expanded in 1994 to include an intermodal facility. Since that time, the BNSF Intermodal Facility has grown from handling 150,000 lifts per year to 500,000 lifts per year.

BNSF also operates Logistics Park—Chicago in Joliet, Ill.

A portion of the 1,671 acres also will be adjacent to Fort Worth Alliance Airport after the extension of the runways to 11,000 feet is completed. Dirt work is currently underway for the project. This will allow AllianceTexas to offer even larger development sites with airport access.

The 1,671 acres are expected to yield an additional 16 million square feet of industrial space, 10,000 jobs and $40 million annually in property taxes. That brings the total projections at build out of the now 17,000-acre AllianceTexas to more than 88 million square feet and 92,000 jobs.

Approximately 4,000 of those 17,000 acres already have been developed and house 130 companies that have built 23.5 million square feet and created 20,000 jobs.

The 1,671-acre expansion is the second largest in the history of the AllianceTexas development, second only to the addition of 2,300 acres through the purchase of Circle T Ranch in 1994.

"It’s only natural for Hillwood, the M.T. Cole Trust and BNSF to work together to continue to attract new businesses, jobs and economic development to AllianceTexas," says Mike Berry, president of Hillwood Properties. "The additional acreage increases AllianceTexas’ position as one of the world’s premier logistics centers. We can now offer rail-served buildings at Logistics Park —AllianceTexas and more runway-accessible land to make the development even more appealing as a site for aerospace manufacturing."

"This partnership is a great opportunity for the Cole family to be involved in this property for many generations, with excellent partners, as opposed to liquidation," said Mike Griffin, attorney for the M.T. Cole Trust. Susan Mead, Don Cole and Amy Griffin, trustees of the M.T. Cole Trust, look forward to accomplishing proper development of this property in order to provide a strong legacy for future generations.

The M.T. Cole Trust was represented by Bobby Dryden and Wayne Pickering. Hillwood and BNSF represented themselves.

AllianceTexas consists of the commerce centers of Alliance, the corporate campuses and golf courses of Circle T Ranch and the high-tech mixed-use community of Heritage. The development, located 15 miles northwest of DFW Airport, lies within four cities: Fort Worth, Roanoke, Haslet and Westlake, and two counties: Tarrant and Denton.

The M.T. Cole Trust was created in the 1930s and owns 10,000 plus acres in southern Denton County and approximately 3,000 acres in and around Alliance Airport.

Hillwood, a Perot company, is ranked as one of the top commercial real estate developers in the country and the top residential developer in Dallas-Fort Worth. In addition to AllianceTexas, the company is best known for its development of more than 14,000 single-family lots in North Texas and the $420-million American Airlines Center and Victory district near downtown Dallas.

A subsidiary of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation (NYSE:BNI), BNSF operates one of the largest railroad networks in North America, with about 32,500 route miles covering 28 states and two Canadian provinces. The railway is among the world's top transporters of intermodal traffic, moves more grain than any other American railroad, transports the components of many of the products we depend on daily, and hauls enough low-sulphur coal to generate about ten percent of the electricity produced in the United States. BNSF is an industry leader in Web-enabling a variety of customer transactions at www.bnsf.com.

BNSF Headquarters
BNSF Railway Company
2650 Lou Menk Dr. 2nd Floor
P.O. Box 961057
Fort Worth, TX 76161-0057
Phone: (817) 352-1000