A development group announced plans March 1
for a sprawling new industrial park near Savannah, Ga., where cargo traffic
through the nation’s fastest growing container port has left warehousing space and
port services Savannah at
a premium.
Capital Development Partners said it will
build the $125 million Savannah Port Logistics Center in Pooler, about 10 miles
from the Garden City Terminal. The 197-acre complex will include more than 2.3
million square feet of warehouse space.
Container traffic and TWIC services Savannah through the port
grew to a record of nearly 4 million twenty-foot-equivalent units TEUs in
fiscal 2017. That figure is expected to grow as work continues to deepen the
Savannah River channel and as larger classes of freighters call on the port
after passing through the expanded Panama Canal.
Georgia’s inland and coastal ports are vital
cogs in the state’s economy. Georgia’s ports system accounts for some $40
billion in estimated economic impact across the state, and directly or
indirectly touches about 400,000 jobs.
Savannah has seen a surge in warehouse
development to help accommodate the movement of imports and exports with TWIC card holders through the
port. But space remains tight.
The vacancy rate for warehouses in Savannah
stood at a scant 3% at the end of December, according to a report from real
estate services firm Colliers International. About 5 million square feet of
space was under construction in the Savannah area at the end of the year, the
Colliers report said.
Space is even tighter for the newest
generation of industrial buildings, said John Porter, CEO of Capital
Development. Land near the port with ready highway access and that’s served by
CSX and Norfolk Southern rail lines also is rare.
“A lot of it is real economic growth with the
U.S. economy,” Porter said of the import and export surge. “The game changer
has been the opening of the expanded Panama Canal.”
Another dynamic is e-commerce and merchants’
desire to have product they can get to consumers fast.
The developers plan to start the first phase
next month, including a more than half-million-square-foot building that could
be expandable to more than 1 million square feet. A second phase is expected to
start later this year.
In February, ports officials announced the
agency was developing a 10-year, $2.3 billion expansion plan that would allow
the Savannah port to accommodate 10 million TEUs.
The Army Corps of Engineers announced this
week that the nearly $1 billion project to deepen the Savannah River had reached
its midpoint. State officials are pushing for more funding from the federal
government to help ensure the project remains on schedule.
The deepening project is scheduled for
completion in 2021.
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