Posted on January 17, 2017
By Casey Smith, Tulsa World
Since its launch in December 1970, the Tulsa Port of Catoosa has grown from 2,000 virtually empty acres at the head of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System to a vital economic hub for the entire region.
And for the majority of that time the multi-modal shipping complex and industrial park has been linked to one man — its aptly named director Robert W., or Bob, Portiss.
At the end of January, after some 40 years with the City of Tulsa Rogers County Port Authority and 32 years as its director, the 73-year-old will retire.
“A typical land development project, you start out at a crawl, and then you begin to walk, and then you go a little bit faster,” Portiss said. “And at some point, depending on the alignment of the stars, you might start to run. And that is what I’ve seen here.”
Portiss was hired as the port’s manager of traffic and sales in March 1973, not long after earning his graduate degree in economics from North Dakota State University and straight off of a job helping small communities in southeastern Oklahoma put together financial packages for various grant and aid programs.
“I was just like a kid in a candy store because of the fact that here’s 2,000 acres of land (and) there was nothing here,” Portiss said. “We had the main wharf and basically two warehouse buildings, and I thought, ‘God, this is incredible. What an opportunity.’ I’m just a young guy and this is a ground floor of an incredible project. I was really excited about it.”
Despite loving his job at the port, Portiss left in 1974 to take a job with a land development company to develop the skills that had come less naturally to him than the transportation side of the business. By the end of 1977, at the invitation of port director Harley Ladd — the same person who hired him the first time — Portiss was back in Catoosa.
Seven years later, he became director. And he’s been there ever since.
“You cannot talk about the port of Catoosa and not include Bob Portiss in the conversation,” said A.H. “Chip” McElroy, chairman of the Port Authority board of directors. “His passion for waterway commerce, his vision and his 40 years of leadership have created the leadership team, the community and the extensive developments that make the Port what it is today.”
Success despite storms
Bolstered by an oil boom, the industrial park at the port experienced its first major explosion of activity in the early 1980s.
“People thought there was no end to the economic activity that was going on,” Portiss said. “We just exploded. It was almost like you were waiting in the lobby out there for us to cut the next deal with.”
Then, the crunch hit. The honeymoon was over, Portiss said.
“I said we have to find a way to be more diversified in our approach,” Portiss said. “Now did we try not to be diversified? Of course not. It was just what was happening. But we said, ‘This really is an eye-opener for us. We need to become more diversified.’ And we did.”
There have also been the inevitable challenges with water level drops or excessive rain, including the rains of 2015 that put cargo movement on hold for the longest time in the port’s history.
The infrastructure of the nation’s inland waterway system — which is owned and maintained by the federal government and seems to have an ever-growing backlog of needs with less money appropriated each year to address them — has also been an issue, with Portiss among the most vocal advocates warning what could happen if part of the system fails.
Last year Congress passed a bill to enable the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to accept assistance from ports and other entities to address critical maintenance.
The biggest accomplishment, Portiss said, is fulfilling the port’s mandate to the residents of Tulsa and Rogers County to operate in a financially solvent manner. They were promised prior to their 1967 approval of $21.2 million in bonds that backed the industrial complex’s development that the port would operate as a business — to spend a dollar, it would have to make a dollar.
“We have been able to operate in a financially solvent manner from day one and we have been able to take care of the infrastructure needs that this port needed to be able to reach a fully developed status, which is where we’re at now,” Portiss said. “From a land developer’s perspective, with what little acreage we have left, we could characterize ourselves as being a fully developed port.
“But the fact that we’ve been able to do that is incredible because we had that $21.2 million worth of general obligation bonds. If you take a look at the investments that we’ve been able to make over the past 40 years, the value of those investments today are worth $150 million. And that $150 million has been leveraged to attract over $2 billion of private investment. And when you look at the amount of money that we owe on the original 2,000 acres — we don’t.”
Portiss’ humility sets tone
Portiss is adamant that it is the port’s board of directors (all volunteers) and its team of employees — and not he — who deserve much of the credit for the success of the industrial park and shipping complex.
Those qualities of modesty and unpretentiousness, current deputy director David Yarbrough said, are just the kind of person that Portiss is. “He’s very humble,” Yarbrough said. “He treats our staff like we’re a team, and he sits down and asks for input. If you say ‘I don’t think that’s right,’ he says, ‘Why?’ I’ve not been in a culture like that in my career.”
That culture of empowerment and humility is one that Yarbrough said he “absolutely” wants to continue when he succeeds Portiss by stepping into the port director role.
Yarbrough said Portiss’ mentorship has helped him and even impacted his family. Yarbrough’s children were watching a live stream of the October 2015 White House ceremony when Portiss was among those awarded the White House Transportation Champions of Change award. They remarked to their father how his boss ended up owning that room because of his sincere and enthusiastic interest in what the other honorees had done.
Portiss was among the winners chosen by the U.S. Transportation Secretary and the White House for his advocacy for inland waterway issues and efforts toward forging a formal partnership between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Arkansas-Oklahoma Port Operators Association.
“He has a quality of owning the room because he relates to people and he cares about them and he knows their names and he usually knows if they’ve got a new baby in the family or something,” Yarbrough said. “He’s just one of those people that remembers that stuff and asks about it. Personally and professionally, I’ve just never met anybody quite like him. It’s something to aspire to and to emulate. So yeah, would I change his culture here? No way.”
Source: Tulsa World
