Obama Budget Provides $28.5M for Craney Island

A planned new container terminal in Portsmouth would get $28.5 million in federal funds under the Obama administration’s announced budget for the next year.

The port authority said the money would go toward construction of a fourth state-owned terminal at Craney Island, an area in southeastern Virginia that includes the port facilities at Norfolk and Hampton Roads. “It will be used for construction, we plan to push forward on construction and this is a good start,” said Jeff Keever, the VPA’s deputy executive director. “The engineering work is ongoing and as soon as that ready, we will go to work.”

The money for work on the Craney Island terminal will probably be funneled into the project through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Joe Harris, a spokesman for the Virginia Port Authority, the state agency that will own the terminal and operate it through its private subsidiary, Virginia International terminals.

Jerry A. Bridges, the Virginia Port Authority’s executive director, credited Virginia Sen. Mark Warner for his efforts on behalf of the terminal. Support for the project’s inclusion in the President’s budget also came from Sen. Jim Webb and from Reps. Bobby Scott, Glenn Nye, Randy Forbes and Robert Wittman.

“This project is key to the growth of The Port of Virginia and the Commonwealth’s economy,” Sen. Warner said. “If we can get it done, it would generate 7,700 direct and indirect jobs immediately from construction. Once the project is fully constructed it will sustain 54,000 direct and indirect jobs at capacity.

Construction of the Craney Island Marine Terminal is a $2.2 billion multiphase project that will result in a 600-acre complex encompassing 8,400 linear feet of berth space. Plans for the terminal call for 20 Suez-class cranes and an on-terminal intermodal container transfer facility. The marine terminal will be built in three phases over the next 20-25 years and upon completion have capacity for at least 2.5 million TEUs.

Work on the first phase is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2011 and finish in 2019 or 2020. This phase includes 220 acres of container yard, 3,000 linear feet of berth space, eight cranes and the ICTF.