Shipping officials discussed details
By TIMOTHY J. GIBBONS, The Times-Union
The Jacksonville Port Authority inched closer last week to signing an agreement
with a Korean steamship line that wants to set up shop on the First Coast, port
officials said.
The company, Hanjin Shipping, brought several executives, as well as engineers,
lawyers and other personnel, to town to hash out some of the issues still under
negotiation and to examine the likely site for the terminal.
If the ongoing conversation goes according to plan, said Roy Schleicher, senior
director of trade development for the port, staff could bring a development
agreement to the board this month and have a signed deal next month.
Hanjin officials denied requests for interviews made by the Times-Union while
they were in town.
The port is looking to place the terminal on the property where it presently has
its cruise terminal, near Dames Point. This is a change since the port signed a
memorandum of understanding with Hanjin in October, when the port planned on
buying land elsewhere on Heckscher Drive for the project.
"This is the first time they've really seriously looked at the Dames Point site,
physically, on the ground," port Executive Director Rick Ferrin said about the
visit.
That would place the Hanjin terminal adjacent to the terminal under construction
for Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd., a $220 million project expected to be finished by
the end of the year. One of the issues remaining before a deal can be struck:
Mitsui has first right of refusal on the property, which the port is trying to
persuade the company to give up.
"There's a number of synergies or economies of scale if two major terminals were
operating adjacent to each other," Ferrin said in explaining why Mitsui would do
so.
Having both terminals in close proximity to each other promises to generate a
massive amount of truck traffic once the operations are up and running. That's
an issue planners are already trying to rectify, said Jeff Sheffield, director
of planning for the First Coast Metropolitan Organization, which oversees
transportation infrastructure improvements in the area.
"We always accounted for two terminals," he said. "We knew another one was
coming."
Sheffield is part of a task force created by the mayor's office that he said was
focused on finding short- and medium-term solutions for the expected congestion
problems.
Before those issues come into play, though, Hanjin and JPA have to come to terms
on a variety of issues, including financing the facility.
The money to build the terminal will come from bonds issued by the port
authority, a process that acting Chief Financial Office Michael Poole said
should go smoothly.
"The market is settling down" from recent turmoil that gripped it, he said. "We
still have three to six months before we issue anything."
Poole joined the negotiating team after the departure of Ron Baker, who resigned
in the midst of an FBI investigation into contracting at the organization and
port board member Tony Nelson.
That departure shouldn't pose a problem, said the executive director.
"I've got a really good team in place," said Ferrin, who in 2005 said Baker's
role in negotiating the contract with Mitsui was "heroic." "We have good
records; we're all pretty cognizant of what's going on."
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