The Jacksonville Port Authority will launch development of a strategic master plan with $300,000 from the Florida Department of Transportation, the port’s board decided Thursday.
The board called a special meeting to discuss how it will plan for the future and if Gulftainer Company Ltd., which made a presentation to the port March 23, will be a part of it.
Gulftainer is based in the United Arab Emirates. Its presentation included an offer to invest $250 million in the port to operate a container terminal on Blount Island.
Port CEO Paul Anderson told the board that the Department of Transportation grant would fund a port master development plan. The board unanimously approved acceptance of the grant.
Anderson expects a final plan to cost between $600,000-800,000.
“As we all know, JaxPort represents community assets that are poised for growth in the coming years. Our story and our potential have caught the attention of the global marketplace,” Anderson said.
“We can be discerning and plan our future carefully. We do not have to accept situations that are less than perfect, at a less than optimal time,” he said.
“JaxPort is in high demand. We are actively seeking ideas and constantly fielding ideas from businesses and investors wanting to see what JaxPort might offer them,” he said.
Anderson explained that the port regularly receives inquiries from companies that want to do business there. Gulftainer was interested in operating a container terminal at Blount Island for 35 years with the possibility of investing up to $250 million in the infrastructure on the property, he said.
“I advised all the board members at that time of the meeting and our staff’s concerns. Gulftainer was interested in taking over significant acreage, specifically at Blount Island,” Anderson said.
“That’s problematic because that is where long-term valued customers now operate. They are customers who have grown with us to this point and have been asking to grow and invest in us further,” he said.
Some customers addressed the board.
“We are the third-largest container terminal operator in the world, so we have a fair understanding of what it takes to compete globally and here in North America,” said Jack Craig, chief operations officer and senior vice president of APM Terminals.
“We clearly have a long-term, vested interest here in JaxPort. We’ve been here for decades and we see JaxPort as a very strategic place for us in the future,” he said.
Though operated through a landlord-tenant agreement at Jacksonville’s port, APM Terminals recently bid to operate all Port of Virginia facilities in Hampton Roads and related inland locations under a long-term concession agreement with the Virginia Port Authority. The value of the proposal to the Commonwealth was estimated to be $3.5 billion.
While the Jacksonville port doesn’t currently have any concession agreements with its customers, it will discuss that option with the board.
“We made the decision to have a strategic master plan and we are going to determine as a port whether or not we would consider in the future being a privatized port. We are a landlord port. We are in high demand and we are going to bring the highest return on investment for the citizens and the community here in JaxPort,” Anderson said.
The problem with a privatized port is that private operators use concession agreements and the JPA doesn’t have a policy for that, according to City General Counsel Cindy Laquidara.
“Because you are a landlord-tenant port, you presently don’t have a process in place to entertain a proposal such as this,” she said.
Board President Reginald Gaffney agreed to work with Anderson and Laquidara to develop a process to address the issue.
“As a board, we are saying that we want to be engaged, but yet we have not yet determined how we are going to be engaged,” Gaffney said.
“Be it a workshop or are we going to talk about the master plan at each meeting? I’m going to leave that to (the board) to determine what kind of board you want to be,” he said.
Asked about a timeline to develop the plan, Anderson told the board that will depend on the Request for Proposal process for a consultant to develop the plan.
He said he would like to see a preliminary plan by the end of the year.
Anderson also said the Port of Miami has a master plan that helped it to receive funding through the Water Resource Development Act passed in 2007.
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