Posted on February 4, 2019
It was just a few words in one sentence of Gov. Henry McMaster’s “State of the State” speech last month, but that single phrase has raised a lot of hopes — in turns out false — in the coastal city of Georgetown.
While talking about a $558 million project underway to dredge Charleston Harbor to a 52-foot depth, allowing big container ships to visit the Port of Charleston at any time, McMaster said: “we will add in the years ahead a revitalized Port of Georgetown …”
Some in Georgetown took that to mean the governor wanted Georgetown Harbor dredged so the little-used port could return to its former glory. A group of legislators representing the area — buoyed by what they thought the governor meant — promised in the wake of McMaster’s speech to renew their push to dredge the increasingly shallow waterway.
But McMaster wasn’t talking about dredging, according to spokesman Brian Symmes. Instead, the governor was referring to finding another use for the state-owned port property that could bring economic benefit to the region. A maritime terminal doesn’t serve that long-term goal.
Georgetown’s port — which hasn’t been dredged in a decade — has languished as silt builds up, leaving a depth of just a few feet at some points. Jim Newsome, who runs the state’s ports system, says it is beyond saving.
“We have done everything we can do,” said Newsome, president and CEO of the State Ports Authority. Newsome said there is no business justification for dredging in Georgetown.
“There’s no way logically to restore the depth,” he said.
The port’s decline is easily seen in its annual statistics. There was 55,684 tons of cargo at the port in 2016 and just 5,949 tons in 2017. Last year, the port recorded zero tons of cargo.
Zero.
Georgetown’s harbor needs to be at least 27 feet deep for the port to operate efficiently. The Army Corps of Engineers says it will cost about $70 million to pull that off. The money for such an initiative does not exist, and the federal government — which oversees the harbor — isn’t going to commit limited funds to a site with no cargo base.
Even if the harbor was dredged, the waterway wouldn’t support but about 20 percent of the world’s fleet of breakbulk — or non-container — cargo ships, which continue to get bigger every few years.
“Most breakbulk ships today carry 40,000 or 50,000 tons,” Newsome said. “The world has moved on in size.”
He said the SPA will work with Georgetown city and county officials to help them redevelop the port site if that’s what the community wants. And, in the meantime, the port will plod along with little to no business.
“We’re going to operate it on the scale that we can operate it,” Newsome said. “But it’s not ever going to be a significant scale.”
Spec space
Construction has started on a nearly 160,000-square-foot speculative distribution center at Palmetto Commerce Park in North Charleston, according to Charlotte-based developer Suncap Property Group.
Palmetto Trade Center I is the first of two buildings planned for SunCap’s 30-acre site. It is designed for up to four tenants with 264 parking spaces, a truck court, a clear height of 32 feet and dock doors of up to 58 feet.
Evans General Contractors is the main builder while the commercial real estate firm CBRE Inc. is marketing the property.
SunCap, formed in 2009, has also developed a FedEx distribution center off Palmetto Commerce Parkway and co-developed a building at the North Pointe Business Campus in Hanahan.
Source: The Post and Courier
