Officials with the Port of New Orleans called on the state to help pay for its $1 billion master plan, which outlines a slate of ambitious development projects to be completed by 2020.
Port President and CEO Gary P. LaGrange said his agency needs far more than the $25 million Gov. Bobby Jindal promised to dedicate to the expansion of the Napoleon Avenue Container Terminal, the centerpiece of the port's master plan. "We need to keep up with our competition," LaGrange said. Jindal asked the Legislature this week to dedicate about $28 million of the state's $1 billion budget surplus to the Port of New Orleans. The bulk of that, or about $25 million, would go to building the second phase of the port's Napoleon Avenue terminal. But LaGrange said the port needs at least $125 million during the next three years to jumpstart the $237.5 million terminal expansion, which would boost the port's ability to process the massive metal boxes that carry consumer products around the country. The facility's four cranes can process annually about 360,000 TEUs, a shipping term that expresses the equivalent of a 20-foot long container box. The second phase of terminal would allow the port to handle an additional 195,000 TEUs. An eventual third step, which would cost another $240 million, would boost the terminal's capacity to about 1.34 million TEUs each year.
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