WASHINGTON: For the first time in 30 years, the Maryland Port Administration has acquired land to accommodate growing business. The port administration announced Tuesday that it has completed the purchase of Point Breeze Business Center near Seagirt Marine Terminal in Southeast Baltimore in a $55 million deal that will expand Seagirt’s footprint to 356 acres. The acquisition is symbolic of a reversal of fortunes for the port of Baltimore, which in recent decades has struggled to remain competitive with larger East Coast ports in New York and Norfolk, Va.
The port now needs extra land to help handle the growing volume of containerized cargo it’s been seeing since the expansion of the Panama Canal. The widened canal gave the super-sized container ships carrying Asian-manufactured goods a more direct route to U.S. East Coast ports beginning last summer. Capitalizing on its deep channels and timely investment in four massive container cranes, Baltimore was able to offer shipping lines an alternative to the congestion and draft and clearance issues in other ports. New York harbor is hampered by shallower, rocky channels, while Charleston, S.C., is limited by the height of a bridge and its distance from East Coast markets.
After the expanded canal opened last year, Baltimore’s container traffic grew by nine percent in the second half of 2016, hitting a record 538,567 containers last year. In the first quarter of 2017, the port’s container volume grew eight percent. “We were concerned that with the success that we had in 2016 — we were the fourth fastest growing port in North America — if we were continuing to grow at that pace, we would have needed to grow container [space] by 2023,” said James White, executive director of the Maryland Port Administration. With the new land, he said, the port should have adequate container capacity through 2030.
