NYK Line is still promising to be at the Port of Tacoma by 2012 – but exactly where is now the question.
The port and NYK announced two years ago that the port would build the Tokyo-based shipping line a container terminal on the Blair-Hylebos Peninsula. The port then filed condemnation actions against several properties in the path of the proposed development and has since spent $137 million buying land for the project.
But now port officials won’t say for certain whether NYK will even be on the peninsula.
“What has changed is that what we originally designed for them isn’t going to work,” port Executive Director Tim Farrell said recently. “There are multiple options on the table and nothing is nailed down.”
Farrell said that terminal options for NYK are spread around the port’s Tideflats property, but he and the commissioners declined to say much more, noting that the port and NYK are still in negotiations.
“It’s hard to say definitively where or what,” said Commissioner Dick Marzano. “The only thing I can say is that in 2012 they will be here.”
Some have suggested that NYK could make use of a terminal that the port leases to APM Terminals. Maersk ships called there until May. Now they stop at the Port of Seattle instead as part of a vessel sharing deal with the French shipping line CMA CGM. Horizon Lines still calls at the Tacoma terminal.
Doug Cole, NYK spokesman, said the company is not negotiating with APM Terminals and remains “involved with the Blair project” in Tacoma.
“We’re still a couple years away from 2012,” Cole said Tuesday. “Whether (the Blair-Hylebos site) will accommodate our future needs is a good question, but there’s been no decision one way or another.”
Port officials said earlier this year that the NYK terminal project would likely be scaled back because of the tanking global economy and construction costs that pushed the estimated price tag for developing the peninsula past $1 billion.
The port has already bought 18 of the roughly two dozen properties that would be in the path of the proposed terminal development.
Most of the affected businesses are still operating in the Tideflats and leasing property from the port. The earliest they would need to vacate their property would be Dec. 31, 2010, said Tara Mattina, the port’s spokeswoman.
Commissioners said that buying the property was a good move for the port, whether or not it’s used for NYK in 2012. The port will need it at some point, they said.
Marzano said, and other commissioners agreed, that where NYK lands isn’t important.
“It doesn’t make a different where it’s located,” he said. “It’s the jobs that come with that.”
Kelly Kearsley: 253-597-8573
kelly.kearsley@thenewstribune.com
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