Like I said in the last post, I don’t usually read the Tacoma News Tribune. It’s a scandal rag, owned by the McClatchy organization.
Last week, I couldn’t help looking at their story on the Port of Tacoma – a copy was lying there on a table at work, open to the story, Port of Tacoma’s Blair Development: Millions to nowhere. So reluctantly – knowing that with a title like that, it couldn’t be a good story – I read on.
In the article, they tell the story of the development of the proposed new container terminal for NYK.
Briefly, in 2007, the Port of Tacoma signed a deal with the shipping line NYK, to provide them a new dedicated 168 acre container terminal in Tacoma, located on the tip of the Blair Peninsula. Integral to building the new terminal was relocating an existing terminal, Totem Ocean Trailer Express (TOTE), and the demolition of existing buildings, as well as the cleanup of some toxic waste sites.
Because the Port didn’t own all the property necessary for the project, it spent some $146 million on property acquisition and demolition.
In 2007 when the deal with NYK was inked, the economy was going great guns. All the projections – which were accepted pretty much universally – held that Chinese imports would explode in the coming years, with cargo growth rates reaching as much as 25% a year. The big fear, up and down the West Coast, was that we would not have enough dock space or the infrastructure available to handle the glut of Chinese cargo coming in.
Continue reading “Port of Tacoma – NYK Deal – Money Mostly Well Spent”