Memphis doesn’t want to miss the boat if and when container ships start plying the Mississippi River on a regular basis.
Port of Memphis officials are looking at how to take advantage of an alliance with a planned deepwater port south of New Orleans and a startup that proposes a container shipping network on mid-America’s inland waterways.
The possibility of container handling and storage facilities where McKellar Lake opens into the Mississippi, downriver or south of Downtown, is among infrastructure upgrades being studied in a Port of Memphis master plan.
It’s early in the process of figuring out what needs to be built and how it would be paid for, but “There’s a lot of interest,” said Reid Dulberger, president and chief executive of the Economic Development Growth Engine of Memphis and Shelby County, which oversees the port.
Officials from Louisiana’s Plaquemines Port Harbor & Terminal District (PPHTD) and Miami-based American Patriot Holdings LLC (APH) were in Memphis last week to meet with freight shippers and the business community. Several dozen people showed up on Friday afternoon at Agricenter’s Showplace Arena in a meeting arranged by the Greater Memphis Chamber.
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