toledoblade.com --

On land where 2,000 Gulf Oil refinery workers once toiled, the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority envisions hundreds of jobs, if not thousands, in an expanded Port of Toledo and other transportation-related businesses.

That was the vision to which James Hartung, the port authority's president, and other dignitaries pointed during a news conference yesterday as they announced the agency's $3.4 million purchase of 181 acres on the former refinery site from Chevron Corp.

"We will make this property grow and support maritime transportation-dependent developments in the future," Mr. Hartung said. "This property's now ready to begin a new life as a contributor to our local economy, to our regional economy and, hopefully, to our national economy."

By buying the refinery property, the port authority now controls the largest land mass of any Great Lakes port.

"There are not many places in the Great Lakes where you have a field like this with access" to vital transportation facilities, said Alex Johnson, president of Midwest Terminals of Toledo, the terminal operator to which the port authority will lease the site long-term for management and development.

Along with ship, rail, and road access, Mr. Johnson listed pipelines among those vital facilities, as several long-distance pipelines reach onto the former Gulf site.

"It's a key piece to the intermodal [capability] we need to look at," Mr. Johnson said.

The port authority financed the purchase with most of a bond issue of up to $4.75 million. Midwest Terminals will become responsible for lease payments equal to the monthly bond service plus annual increases tied to the Consumer Price Index, or 6 percent of its revenue derived from the property, whichever is greater.

Toledo's potential power as an intermodal distribution and logistics hub - intermodal meaning the capability to ship using, or transfer freight between, varying modes of transportation - was the subject of a two-day Blade report Sunday and yesterday.

The Port of Toledo's potential as an interface between ships, trucks, and trains was highlighted, particularly in light of proposed "short-sea shipping" of containerized freight between a new port on the Nova Scotia coast and Great Lakes ports like Toledo.

Mr. Hartung said the exact job count that could develop on the former refinery site is "a moving target" depending on what mix of businesses locate there, but it could be "easily within the hundreds, maybe more than 1,000.

"We would love to be able to replicate the 2,000 that used to be here" before Gulf closed the refinery, he said.

"That's what we want to see here again," said Mike Craig, a city councilman whose district includes East Toledo. He praised the port expansion idea as a step to "revitalize the core of the city."

Preparatory work to ready the site for development, including dock-face rehabilitation, river dredging to provide adequate depth for ships, paving, and restoration of rail access, "will take around a year," Mr. Johnson said.

Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner and Pete Gerken, a Lucas County commissioner, both noted that the city, county, and port authority jointly applied last week for a $5 million grant from the Ohio Department of Development's "Jobs-Ready Site" program to apply to those preparatory costs. The $5 million is the maximum grant available through that program. "If this isn't a job-ready site, I don't know what is," Mr. Gerken said.

Chevron, which bought the site from Gulf after the refinery's 1982 shutdown, had spent more than $19 million to clean up residual pollution left over from Gulf's operations there.

Mr. Hartung and others praised Chevron for its work, noting that the company spent more than $6 million beyond what was required by the Voluntary Action Plan agreement into which it entered with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

The site is bounded to the northwest by the Maumee River; to the northeast by a BP Oil barge terminal, the George Gradl Co., and Millard Avenue; to the southeast by the CSX Transportation railroad, and to the southwest by the Norfolk Southern railroad. Front Street divides the property into eastern and western sections.

Its acquisition, Mr. Hartung said, is a step toward pursuing Toledo's future as a transportation center whose location and assets elevate it above competitors.

"We have a strategic convergence of geography and transportation assets," the port president said.

Achieving that potential, he said, "is going to require political will and the elimination of turfism. Today is a step. It's not the end of the journey, it's the beginning of the journey."

Contact David Patch at:
dpatch@theblade.com
or 419-724-6094.

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