By: Ryan LaFontaine
A new expansion plan being rolled out today details a strategy to turn the Port of Gulfport into the largest container port in the United States, capable of handling more container cargo than currently runs through Port of Los Angeles.
This plan is nothing like the previous one, reviled by casino executives and residents of Gulfport’s West Side community because it threatened to swallow the beachfront nearly to Broad Avenue.
Indeed this plan is much, much bigger. The billion-dollar concept would put an entirely new port directly south of the present day location.
“This would be the single largest economic-development project in the state’s history,” said Lee Youngblood, a spokesman for the Mississippi Development Authority. “It’s a statewide project with implications from the Coast going all the way up the state to the Tennessee line.”
The plan is so massive the current port property likely will become a beach-side promenade with shops and restaurants. An elevated expressway will travel over the promenade, on a bridge across a new channel and south to the new Port of Gulfport.
In addition, the decade long fight over a plan to build the Canal Road Connector, a freeway - some of it elevated - linking the port to Interstate 10, seems pointless now, because such a road won’t come close to satisfying the needs of a future Port of Gulfport, which will be built up to an elevation of 25 feet with a channel more than twice as wide as it is now.
“If you think of (the Port of Los Angeles), it has two interstates coming in and out and if we’re going to be bigger than Los Angeles, we’re going to need something more robust,” said Dough Sethness, vice president of CH2M Hill, one of the worlds largest engineering firms, which is redesigning the port.
The plan includes a new route that runs through an underground corridor linking the port to the I-10. The corridor would be wide enough to handle at least eight lanes of traffic and a rail line.
Before the plan can begin to take shape, the port knows it must win the community’s support. Without it, the plan isn’t worth the paper it was printed on.
“We need that support more than we need anything else,” Sethness said.
The old plan - the one that showed the port expanding west nearly to Broad Avenue - was despised partly because it threatened to take a large stretch of beach, but also because it was fed to the public in pieces. Residents felt shut out of the planning process, as if their voices didn’t matter.
The public relation strategy behind the new plan is completely different. The entire concept is being unveiled today. The MDA is running a four-page insert in the Sun Herald on Monday to give even more details of the plan with an emphasis on public involvement and transparency.
The state Port Authority recently launched a Web site to solicit suggestions from the public on the new design; some ideas already have been included in the plan.
In addition, the port seems to be framing the conversation carefully, using words such as “concept” and “idea” and stressing the plan is written in pencil, not ink.
“It’s a work in progress, not necessarily a final product,” Youngblood said. “We’re still taking feedback and when this plan prints and the insert runs in the paper on Monday we’ll still be taking feedback.”
The Port Authority Commission has yet to adopt a single portion of the plan and will begin holding public meetings as early as next week.
Without the backing of the community, state and federal agencies might be fearful of issuing the proper construction and environmental permits to the project.
Congressional leaders could feel pressure to oppose the expansion rather than wrap their arms around it.
International container shipments are expected to more than double in the next 20 years and U.S. ports are scrambling to keep pace, Many major ports have been boxed in by neighboring communities and environmental opposition has curtailed future growth.
But Sethness said Gulfport is not bound by decades of poor planning and development.
“The advantage we have at Gulfport is that we don’t have anything to start with,” he said. “When we build at Gulfport, we’re going to be building a whole new port.”
Millions of containers enter the United States every year through terminals in California, but port congestion and labor shortages in recent years have forced cargo ships to wait in long lines at major West Coast ports. Many vessels small enough to fit through the Panama Canal have been diverted into the Gulf of Mexico. Experts say the future expansion of the Panama Canal, which would allow next generation mega-ships to squeeze into the Gulf, will drastically increase business at Gulf Coast ports.
Cargo from Asia bound for the East Coast currently travels the longer Suez Canal route. Port leaders in Gulfport believe the port expansion, if timed right, and the widening of the Panama Canal - expected to be complete by 2015 - would allow more cargo to enter the country at Gulfport and be trucked to East Coast destinations, saving shipping companies time and money.
South Mississippi has seen its share of big dreams come and go since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. There was the hope coastal towns would rebuild as walkable communities with front porches, sidewalks, and small eateries in every neighborhood. There was a plan to move the railroad tracks north and add a trolley line down U.S. 90, which would become a slow-growing scenic route.
But for whatever reason - economics, logistics or a deficiency of strong local leadership - those ideas are hardly talked about anymore.
“The most disappointing thing to me is to hear some of your community leaders say things like, ’Don’t you know this is Mississippi? We can’t do that?’” Sethness said. “This concept is a valid concept. It’s something I think is very real for Gulfport.”
Port and state officials say pessimistic politicians could sink the plan before it even sets sail, and today begins a critical campaign to defrost relations with community members rankled by the old plan and to strengthen the rapport with local business and political leaders.
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