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S.C., Georgia to share in Jasper port
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Governors Mark Sanford and Sonny Perdue met recently on a waterfront patio across the Savannah River from the historic district of its namesake city to make a little history themselves: the formal announcement of a rare, bi-state partnership to jointly build and operate a massive cargo container terminal on land Georgia owns in South Carolina.
A little more than six months ago, the South Carolina and Georgia governors said they wanted to set aside years of legal acrimony attached to the Jasper County land. On Nov. 9, the governors announced they now had a deal in hand—pending approval by their respective Legislatures—to create a port on 1,400 acres of undeveloped land that now serves as a dump site for dredged spoil material.
The announcement, made outside the Savannah International Trade and Convention Center, sets in motion a series of events in which construction could begin within five years on property known as the Jasper Ocean Terminal, with actual cargo passing through it in 10 years.
The new port terminal “will mean benefits for Georgia, South Carolina and the entire Southeastern United States for generations to come,” said Perdue to a gathering of about two dozen government officials and port advocates.
“Sonny and I wanted to come together today to plant another stake in the ground to underscore how important this effort is,” Sanford said.
In recent years, both the S.C. State Ports Authority and the Georgia Ports Authority have invested billions of dollars to upgrade their respective terminals in Charleston and Savannah.
But officials from both states now concede that even if they could quickly fulfill all their long-term growth goals, they’d still be unable to keep up with surging trade volumes from China, India and other parts of the world.
In the past year, when other U.S. ports were reporting decreases in the number of containers that cross their docks, Savannah has seen double-digit increases, thanks largely to its efforts to serve China’s import market.
Charleston has been focusing its marketing efforts on India and on capturing trade most often ferried by the largest of cargo ships that flows through the Suez Canal.
The deal officially ends litigation over South Carolina’s condemnation of the Georgia-owned property.
Jasper County had long been seen as a potential site for a container terminal, but it was considered a relatively low priority—well below the respective expansions of the ports of Charleston and Savannah until about seven years ago, when Jasper County officials initiated discussions with a private company, SSA Marine of Seattle, about establishing a terminal on the site.
When the Georgia Department of Transportation refused to sell the land—just a sliver of the 10,000 acres it owns in Jasper County—Jasper condemned it. Then, in 2005, with plans to build a massive “Global Gateway” on Daniel Island dashed and the permitting for an alternative site at the former Charleston Naval Base slow to materialize, the S.C. State Ports Authority began to secure the Jasper County site.
Last spring, a state Supreme Court judge ruled that South Carolina has first rights to condemn the land. Two months later, Sanford and Perdue announced they’d brokered a deal for the port.
The recently inked compact between the two governors establishes both states’ ports authorities as co-tenants of the new terminal. Both ports authorities will split the $7 million price tag for the land and will each contribute an additional $3 million for the creation of an office that will obtain permits and figure out how to pay for needed roads, rail and utilities.
That office will be overseen by a six-member board appointed by the governors and the ports authorities. Among the first duties will be petitioning the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to release easements held on the land that allow the Corps to use it as a spoil site.
While the ports authorities work on permitting and infrastructure, the two state legislatures will work to ratify a more detailed agreement of how the states will run the port and share in its revenues. Congress will then have to ratify the interstate compact.
The first phase of the project is expected to cost about $600 million. Sanford said he hopes the office overseeing the construction of the terminal will work with private maritime companies to defray some of those construction costs.
Sanford said while the two entities will cooperate in Jasper County, they’ll still compete for market share and customers for their existing port facilities.
“Competition is good,” he said.
Beyond setting the stage for the creation of a giant logistics megaplex on the shores of the Savannah River, the deal might also foreshadow massive infrastructure projects that will ultimately tie it into the huge distribution, warehousing and manufacturing developments currently in the works in Orangeburg and Berkeley counties.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see that happen; it certainly makes sense,” Sanford said. “But I’ll leave that up to the logistics experts.”
A two-lane stretch of U.S. Highway 17 lies about three miles west of the terminal site, extending from Interstate 95 to downtown Savannah, and beyond that Interstate 16 in Georgia.
The CSX railroad’s main line comes within 13 miles of the facility site.
Tom Davis, Sanford’s chief of state, said Highway 17 would have to be widened to four lanes through the area, and a direct connection with the CSX line also would have to be built.
“The beauty of the site is that it’s not constricted by past development choices. It’s almost like the surface of the moon,” Davis said.
The state of Georgia has already indicated that it’d be willing to sell any portion of the remaining 8,500 acres it owns to the joint terminal office to facilitate infrastructure development, and the owner of about 3,600 acres directly north of that land also has indicated he would sell all or part of his holdings for the same purpose.
“So could we connect this to the Jafza International project and the other distribution center projects near it? Certainly,” Davis said.
“This project is all about connectivity,” Sanford said. “It’s about creating jobs on both sides of the Savannah River and about our being competitive in the global marketplace for decades to come.
“It goes without saying that connectivity has to be part of that equation.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@setcommedia.com.
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