Heckscher Drive may get a lift

[thelakelander]

To make the Zion property feasible for a future container port, the solution is to elevate Heckscher Drive between Eastport Road and August Drive, allowing direct access to the riverfront.

NORTHSIDE -- The Jacksonville Port Authority is working with the Jacksonville Transportation Authority on expanding a road widening project along Heckscher Drive to include a roughly 1,900-foot-long overpass that would facilitate building a container terminal.

JTA plans to widen a 2.2-mile stretch of Heckscher Drive between Drummond Point and August Drive from two lanes to four lanes. The port authority is prepared to pay $10 million to $20 million to add to the nearly $47 million project's scope so that cargo can be moved to and from ships.

The segment passes through property owned by Zion Jacksonville Limited Partnership, about 170 acres of which the port authority has been negotiating for years to buy, offering more than $50 million. Those efforts took on a renewed urgency in October when Hanjin Shipping Company Ltd., a Korea-based ocean carrier, signed a memorandum of understanding with the authority to build a 170-acre container terminal in Jacksonville by 2011.

A Hanjin terminal is projected to move up to 1 million 20-foot-equivalent-units of containerized cargo a year. That would put Jacksonville among the East Coast's top container ports when added to Japan-based Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd.'s terminal opening next year at Dames Point, which is expected to reach 800,000 TEUs annually.

http://jacksonville.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2007/11/12/story2.html

[Charles Hunter]

The question is ... can JaxPort get their deal done quickly enough - or JTA 'hold' their project - so JTA won't build the road flat, then have to go back and build the overpass?

[thelakelander]

Is it possible for JTA to work on the project, outside of this elevated section, first to allow the deal ample time to be completed?