Posted on January 30, 2018
By Will Robinson, Jacksonville Business Journal
Jaxport told tenants during a quarterly meeting Wednesday that Frederick Wong, Jr., assistant port director at the Port of Miami, has accepted an offer to become chief operating officer at Jaxport.
Wong, who was selected from a national search by Korn Ferry, will join the port authority Feb. 5 at the next board meeting. Wong replaces Chris Kauffman, who retired last year.
“Fred has done a lot of things there [at Miami] that we’ll be embarking on,” CEO Eric Green told the group, noting Wong’s experience with dredging, replacing aging equipment and working with cruise lines.
Wong brings 23 years of industry experience, Green said, and has worked his way up from his start as a toll taker for cruise ships.
Green informed the group that dredging on the first three miles of the deepening project will begin Jan. 30. The project, which was expected to begin Dec. 15, had been delayed while the contractor, Dutra Group, completed a dredge at Port Everglades. He projected a five-year timeline for the full, 11-mile dredge, although the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently estimated the project would finish in 2025.
“We’re very excited,” Green said. “We’re going to get this project done.”
Roy Schleicher, Jaxport chief commercial officer, reiterated the importance of the project for the tenants in the room.
“It’s good for the community. It’s good for jobs,” he said. “We are just scratching the surface of what the port will be… This is necessity, not a wish list item.”
Green also updated tenants on the status of plans to relocate them. To get the full benefits at 11 miles of the 13-mile dredging plan studied by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a cost-savings change Jaxport announced last year, TraPac would need to move from Dames Point Marine Terminal to Blount Island Marine Terminal, though it is not clear who would be displaced.
“That’s not something that’s going to happen in the near future,” Green said.
Schleicher, who reiterated that the relocations will not be made in the near future, thanked tenants for being cooperative in making room for new business, given the shortage of available land owned by the port authority.
“We want to combine container business at Blount Island as much as possible,” Schleicher said.
Other items discussed at the meeting included traffic concerns getting out of Blount Island in the afternoons and the possible addition of food trucks on Jaxport property as a service to the tenants’ employees.
Source: Jacksonville Business Journal
