Joe Carter

The Georgia State Senate study committee on increasing cargo capacity at Georgia ports is to submit its recommendation as to whether the state should provide funding for plans to build an inland port in Cordele by the end of this year, Committee Chairman Joe Carter told GlobalAtlanta.

The Senate committee, which is comprised of Mr. Carter of Tifton, Ronnie Chance of Tyrone, Jeff Chapman of Brunswick, George Hooks of Americus, Eric Johnson of Savannah, Michael Meyer von Bremen of Albany and Jeff Mullis of Chickamauga, visited Cordele Nov. 6 to view the proposed site for the port.

The construction of a facility for processing and moving cargo in Cordele would connect South Georgia to global trade via the seaport in Savannah. 

The port’s construction “would bring some significant economic development opportunities to a part of the state that is hungry for those opportunities,” Mr. Carter said.

Bruce Drennan, executive director of the Cordele-Crisp Industrial Development Council, described the proposed facility as a means of providing companies involved in the import-export process with more direct access to shipping services that could reduce truck traffic to Savannah.

The proposal to build an inland port in Cordele came from the council after the results of a feasibility study completed early this year by the Georgia Institute of Technology showed that the area could accommodate such a facility.

Brad Lafevers, chief executive officer of the Heart of Georgia Railroad, said that rail lines from Cordele to Savannah, 189 miles away, provide “a closed, short-line route which makes the economics of moving traffic over the line more competitive than by truck.”

He added that export cargo could travel from Cordele to Vidalia on the Heart of Georgia line and from there to the seaport on the Georgia Central Railway. 

Import cargo could be moved from Savannah by rail to the inland port, where it would be put through customs and carried to distribution centers in the region by truck.

Mr. Drennan said that planners have already identified a site for the port at Cedar Creek Corporate Park, 423 acres of undeveloped land on Georgia Highway 300 owned by Crisp County. 

He said that an advantage of the Cordele site is the availability of space for storing empty cargo containers.  Currently, a shipper in need of containers has to drive a truck all the way to Savannah in order to get them.

Construction on the inland port could begin as soon as the Senate consents to the project and cargo could be moved out of the site within a year of approval Mr. Drennan said.

“It would be very spartan at first,” he said.  “But depending on the level of traffic it could be expanded pretty dramatically.”

The first phase of construction is expected to cost $47 million, but the Cordele-Crisp council is asking for an appropriation of only $500,000 out of the state budget.  Mr. Drennan was confident that the rest of the money could be raised through grants, state programs and the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Community Empowerment Program.

He added that the project already has the support of Doug Marchand, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, and that companies are already lined up to build warehouses for the port.

There are currently two ports on inland waterways in Georgia: the Port of Bainbridge and Port Columbus move cargo by barge on the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint rivers. 

The Cordele port would be the first dry inland port in Georgia.  “It’s a proven concept, it works,” Mr. Drennan said, adding that the idea is modeled after the inland port in Front Royal, Va., which moves cargo 211 miles to the seaport at Norfolk.

Mr. Carter said that the Senate committee is reviewing further results from Georgia Tech before it makes its recommendation but that the opportunities that might be presented by the Cordele project are exciting.