24


Issue 2 2021 - FBJNA


///GEORGIA PORTS


Garden City Terminal, Port of Savannah. (GPA/Jeremy Polston photo.)


>> 23 means the


territories. Which only


GPA hasn’t — yet — reached the remaining 30 hegemonies. That’s why the United


Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 2019 named Savannah among the Top 3 best-connected ports in North America, alongside the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and South Carolina Ports Authority’s Charleston terminal. Of 900 ports worldwide, Savannah placed the 37th best-connected, UNCTAD reported. “It doesn’t mean we’re the


largest,” Lynch emphasizes. “It means we’re the most- connected. We service every major trade lane in the world: Europe, Africa, the Middle East,


Asia,


South America. We’re


hitting all of those because of our location.”


Location, Location, Location


Location has served the


charming Southern city well since its founding in 1733. In 1793, at Mulberry Grove Plantation, barely 11 miles from Lynch’s office, Eli Whitney invented one of industry’s (at


least, agriculture’s) most


disruptive technologies at the time: the cotton gin. Two dozen years later, the appropriately named S.S. Savannah, was the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, landing in Liverpool, England, in late June of that year. (One particular Southern live oak tree at the Garden City


Terminal is said to have been planted in 1649.) A toddler by comparison, the GPA marked its 75th birthday


World War II’s economic boom. Lynch, a native New Yorker, has been with the GPA for 10 years, executive director for half that


sees on a table a green book published more than a decade aſter the GPA launched. “The amazing thing about


Speaking of absorption,


Lynch says Savannah ranks No. 1 in the nation for warehousing. The authority boasts some 80 million square feet, with 9 million square feet under construction. Savannah’s economic-development people tell him the port has room for another 130 million square feet for warehousing. He refers back to the


publication: “It’s really neat. It talks about the various investments that the Georgia


Construction continues on the Mason Mega Rail project at the Garden City Terminal. (GPA photo.)


last year since the Georgia legislature created the ports authority in response to post-


time. When Lynch pivots away from his office window, he


it, in1958, they weren’t even talking about containers, per se, but they were thinking about growth and making sure they had the projects in place to absorb the growth, ensuring they had capacity.” he says.


The Port of Savannah’s cranes work seven vessels simultaneously along Garden City Terminal’s 10,000-ft dock. (GPA/Jeremy Polston photo.)


ports needed to make to keep pace with growth.” Here are just a few 21st-


century ones: The U.S. Army Corps of


Engineers’ $973 million Savannah Harbor Expansion Project will dredge up $282 million a year savings on consumers’ transportation costs, the GPA says: “Every dollar spent on construction will yield $7.30 in benefits.”


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