Seagirt

The $250 million Seagirt Marine Terminal will not be filled as quickly as Baltimore port officials had promised because the port's new administration has decided to become more selective in the tenants it chooses.Atlantic Container Line, one of the largest shipping lines at the port, was informed this week that the state will not allow it to lease space at Seagirt, says Michael Fox, ACL's general sales manager. The decision disappointed ACL and has prompted the line to reevaluate its business in Baltimore and other ports.

At a lavish opening ceremony in 1990, Seagirt Marine Terminal was modestly hailed as the "the greatest facility in the world," a state-of-the-art container terminal that would restore the port of Baltimore to its former glory as the gateway to the Midwest.One of the most technologically advanced terminals anywhere, Seagirt has been pivotal to the resurgence of the once beleaguered port. In an era when ports are competing furiously for fewer and fewer ships, it is the state's Camden Yards on the Patapsco, an impressive signal to the world's shippers that Maryland wants their business.

Eighteen years after its opening was hailed as the beginning of a renaissance for the port of Baltimore, the Seagirt Marine Terminal is operating at less than half capacity, despite longtime state efforts to bolster traffic at the only port terminal that exclusively handles lucrative container cargo. Containerized cargo remains the port's bread and butter, accounting for 65 percent of the business at Maryland's public terminals. But Seagirt continues to lose ground to its East Coast competitors, as container volume growth in Norfolk, New York and Savannah has far outpaced Baltimore.

Looming over the waterfront like a small herd of giraffes browsing in the tops of a stand of acacia trees, the 20-story cranes hoist bus-sized boxes from the ship berthed below, then lower them gently onto the backs of trucks called yard hustlers.Container after container rises to the whirling winches, lightening the ship at a rate of 25 an hour, as the diesel trucks roar and whisk deposited boxes from the dock.The $250 million Seagirt Marine Terminal, designed to lead Baltimore back to prominence among East Coast ports, is up and running after a very slow start.

A decision by one of the world's largest steamship lines to return to the Port of Baltimore will increase business at the Seagirt Marine Terminal by 20 percent and give a much-needed boost to the year-old facility.Maryland Port Administration Director Adrian Teel said that, with the signing of Orient Overseas Container Line Ltd. (OOCL), the $250 million container cargo facility will be about 70 percent filled.OOCL will be the fourth line to enter the high-tech facility, but the first new business Seagirt has garnered since it opened last September.

A new joint service to South America will boost cargo through NTC the new Seagirt Marine Terminal by 6,000 containers a year, the Maryland Port Administration announced.Mediterranean Shipping Co. of Geneva, Switzerland, and Empremar S.A., the national shipping line of Chile will begin the joint service on Oct. 7 with the departure of the MV Presidente Aguirre Cerda from New York. The joint service will provide service to ports on the U.S. East and Gulf coasts and ports in Peru and Chile.The joint operation is expected to handle about 6,000 containers annually through Seagirt, according to Maryland Port Administration press release.

Isaac Shafran, who presided over the port of Baltimore's massive capital expansion program for the last five years, has resigned as director of development for the Maryland Port Administration.He becomes the second of the port agency's five directors to resign since Adrian G. Teel took over the helm of the MPA in late June with orders to revitalize the troubled port agency. The director of personnel, Tracy V. Drake, left July 5."Isaac's been an extremely hard worker for the port," Mr. Teel said yesterday.

Truckers using the state's ultra-modern Seagirt Marine Terminal are experiencing long delays at the gate, the result of start-up problems port officials say they are moving quickly to correct.Yesterday morning the trucks were backed up in six parallelines, each lane six or seven vehicles deep. Drivers, gathered in small groups alongside their idling trucks, talked among themselves about the problems they have experienced at Seagirt."What do you think Gov. [William Donald] Schaefer would say if he spent an hour here watching this?"

Silhouetted against a bright blue sky yesterday morning on his perch at the top of a stack of cargo containers rising four stories above the deck of the Rafaela S., Joe Carter helped nudge the crane hoist into position. On a hand signal from Mr. Carter to the crane operator in his cab high overhead, the hoist dropped with a clang and locked onto the corners of a blue cargo container.At 8:21, as the crane lifted the box gently off the ship, Jim Cook, one of the longshoremen helping to unload the cargo, applauded.

Against a backdrop of three huge cranes towering over a containership laden with stacks of bright green containers, Capt. Y. T. Lin, Evergreen Marine Corp.'s executive vice president of operations, praised the port of Baltimore yesterday for building its new Seagirt Marine Terminal."We thank you for this facility," said Captain Lin, adding that his line was happy with Seagirt and predicting that the facility would allow his line and the port to provide better service to their customers.Evergreen is one of two lines to have signed a lease to use Seagirt.