by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
If you’ve driven over the Dames Point Bridge lately, you’ve probably seen the construction of the new TraPac Container Terminal at Dames Point and wondered exactly what is going on.
The Commercial Real Estate Women(CREW) of Jacksonville visited the new TraPac Container Terminals last month for a luncheon and tour of the facility.
Four different speakers addressed the group to talk about the terminal prior to the tour: Joanna Rodriguez of Powell Design Group, who designed nine of the 11 buildings at the terminal; Jenna Rowland of Tower OHL; Rick Ferrin, executive director of the Jacksonville Port Authority; and David Smolder, project manager of the Port’s TraPac Container Terminal.
“The interesting thing about this project is that TraPac and JaxPort wanted the combination of durability and good design,” said Rodriguez. “So what they wanted wasn’t your typical metal buildings. They wanted something special and different because this project has high visibility. As you drive over the Dames Point Bridge you are looking down on this project. We designed a combination of pre-cast concrete, steel and metal roofs in a series of buildings that are all themed so they all have similar elements and the whole project ties together.”
Since the project is still under construction CREW members were only able to visit the administration building. The other 10 were viewed from the bus.
There are a series of canopies throughout the site that serve many different needs of the site.
“These aren’t ordinary canopies,” said Rodriguez. “These are entry and exit canopies for all of the hundreds of trucks that will be entering and exiting the site after December. These canopies are instrumental in the operational security of the site. So, they had to be designed in such a way to allow the incoming and outgoing traffic and then of course the Department of Homeland Security will come in and install all of their sensitive equipment.”
Construction firm Tower OHL is managing the construction of 11 buildings at the new terminal, including an administration building, maintenance and repair facilities, a U.S. Customs examination station, entrance and exit structures and labor facilities. The Tower Group is also paving the adjacent 17 acres around the buildings and constructing TraPac Way, the facility’s entrance from New Berlin Road.
“I don’t know of any construction project in Jacksonville that is going to touch every single one of our citizens in this area from the products that we buy to the jobs that it has already created and will create to the tax revenue that the imports and exports will generate,” said Rowland.
During the tour Ferrin gave his vision of what’s coming in the future for the terminal.
“I honestly believe that JaxPort will be the third largest port on the East Coast of the United States,” said Ferrin. “There will be nearly 100,000 regional jobs that will be directly, indirectly or induced by the activity at that port. Our economic impact will be $5 to $6 billion dollars a year. We will be running three or four, hopefully five cargo terminals and have year-round cruise service.
“That will be JaxPort, which I think will be the center of this region’s identity. I think we will be known for transportation and logistics and a global gateway to the Southeastern United States.”
Ferrin is responsible for the execution of the day-to-day mission of the Port Authority.
“We are the landlord of the port,” said Ferrin. “What we do is go out and find the money and the property. We plan and design marine facilities and build marine facilities and maintain the facility and much of the machinery on those facilities. Most important, we market those facilities to enhance the corporate business of the tenants that we already have and get new ones.”
Ferrin said that developing the east/west trade lanes was key for the Port to grow.
“Our first breaking through to those east/west trade lanes was in 2005 when we signed a 30-year lease with TraPac,” he said. “TraPac is a terminal operator. They belong to Mitsui/OSK lines. And Mitsui/OSK lines belongs to the big company, Mitsui.”
Ferrin said the terminal will be complete in January.
“It’s only about four or five months away,” said Ferrin. “But, they decided to start their service early because of their confidence in Jacksonville and their certainty that Jacksonville will provide a global gateway to the Southeast United States.”
The Port signed another deal last October with Hanjin Shipping Co. to build a $360 million container terminal in Jacksonville. Ferrin said if all the deals go through as planned Dames Point will have two Asian terminals which will be where the cruise ship terminal is today.
“Those two terminals each will be capable of handling about a million containers a year,” said Ferrin. “That’s pretty close to a total volume of two million containers a year. Where are we today? We are sitting at a little less than 800,000 containers. So this is going to double, if not triple our container throughput in a very short period of time. This is a tremendous deal.”
Each one of these deals is worth about 5,700 new jobs. There are about 1,700 jobs at the terminal and another 4,000 jobs that are either induced jobs or indirect jobs. The economic impact of each of these deals is about $1 billion a year.
Ferrin said that the Hanjin terminal will probably be the most advanced and most automated terminal in the United States, capable of handling more cargo per acre than any other terminal that is currently in use.