(The following story by David Patch and Ignazio Messina appeared on the Toledo Blade website on March 27, 2009.)
TOLEDO, Ohio — The metropolitan Toledo area will get nearly $35 million from a federal stimulus windfall – about half of which will be used to continue modernizing the Toledo Shipyard.
“We are incredibly pleased to be able to move the timeline on these projects up significantly due to this funding,” Paul Toth, the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority’s interim president, said in a statement announcing the grants. “These projects will modernize the Port of Toledo, and we are particularly enthused because this action directly creates jobs.”
In addition to $21.8 million for the port authority, Toledo has been awarded $6.5 million to be combined with local, state, and private funds to improve the Airline Junction Intermodal Terminal in South Toledo at the center of Norfolk Southern’s Toledo operation.
“This is a good day for our city,” Mayor Carty Finkbeiner said. “The intermodal project … was hotly debated not very many months ago. A lot of hot air, a lot of conversation, not a lot of focus. Today, there is not only focus, there is private money, and there is public money.”
The local projects are among 149 statewide transportation infrastructure projects, using $774 million in federal stimulus funds, that Gov. Ted Strickland’s administration announced yesterday. Based on federal calculations for transportation investment, the projects are expected to create or retain 21,257 jobs, with thousands of additional jobs likely from resulting private economic development.
Most of the money – $603.5 million – will be used for highway projects, but most of Toledo’s money will be for improving facilities to handle rail and maritime freight.
The city’s intermodal yard, which is where Norfolk Southern Corp.’s main east-west line meets the line to Detroit, is planned to undergo a $13.2 million expansion to create more sidings so more trains can be stopped and unloaded without slowing down east-west traffic on the line.
The project is expected to create about 900 jobs, according to the mayor’s Joint Task Force for Intermodal Transportation and Logistics.
James Tuschman, task force chairman, said the project still needs more funding. He said Norfolk Southern will contribute $4 million, which would be added to the federal money.
The largest single appropriation in the Toledo region is $15 million for renovations, construction, and equipment at the Toledo Shipyard that port authority officials had identified as needs, but until now had no funding for.
Sea-wall improvements, pump-house repair or replacement, and gate improvements at the shipyard to enhance the yard’s shipbuilding capacity are expected to cost $10 million, while $2 million is to be spent to extend the high-bay fabrication shop by 300 feet, and $3 million is earmarked for heavy manufacturing machinery.
The machinery, including a plate roll, plate press machines, and a plasma cutting table, would allow barge and wind-turbine component construction inside the shop.
The 20,000-square-foot high-bay shop now standing at the Toledo Shipyard opened early last year and cost $2 million in port authority, Lucas County, and federal funds. But construction was delayed for nearly a year by funding problems, and the facility’s size was cut to half of what the port authority had planned for.
The port authority and Ironhead Marine, which operates the agency-owned shipyard under contract, estimate the improvements could generate as many as 100 skilled-trades jobs there, besides temporary construction jobs. Along with building wind turbine components and barges, Ironhead predicts opportunities to refit vessels to handle freight containers if short-sea shipping between Toledo and Atlantic Canada ports, via the St. Lawrence Seaway, develops.
To support container cargo development, the port authority will receive $6.8 million to buy a high-speed crane to either replace or supplement cargo cranes at the Port of Toledo, plus a “reach stacker” to marshal containers on port property.
Cranes of the type to be acquired “are utilized at coastal ports but are rare at major ports on the Great Lakes,” according to the port authority.
The cranes would be operated by skilled longshoremen, and additional cargo-handling capability at the port should also be a jobs generator, the port authority said without offering a specific forecast.
Separately, $3 million for Otter Creek Road will allow a complete reconstruction from Corduroy Road to Bay Shore Road, including part of Bay Shore near Toledo Edison’s power plant, Oregon City Administrator Ken Filipiak said.
Otter Creek is a primary heavy truck route in Oregon’s industrial area. Its concrete will be ground up into rubble and re-used as a base for a new, wider roadway, Mr. Filipiak said.
“The road is basically destroyed – its joints are shot,” he said.
Major projects elsewhere in northwest Ohio include $2.01 million for a bridge replacement on State Rt. 67 in Seneca County; $2.5 million for roadway and bridge rehabilitation on State Rt. 66 in Defiance County, and $1.05 million for resurfacing three state highways in Putnam County.
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) praised the Toledo-area project selections. “These choices reflect priorities that can grow our job base and bring new economic activity to the area,” Miss Kaptur said. “Our previous federal investments in making improvements at the Port of Toledo, as well as rail and cargo capacity here, have resulted in this further investment.”
Ohio also is getting $84 million for energy efficiency and conservation projects from the stimulus package. Toledo was awarded $3.1 million of that to invest in projects that reduce reliance on fossil fuels and promote green economic development projects, Mayor Finkbeiner said.
Findlay got $172,600 and Lima, Ohio, got $171,200 for unspecified energy-efficient projects.
Mayor Finkbeiner said he and Tim Murphy, commissioner of the city’s environmental services division, yesterday came up with four tentative uses for the money: retrofitting old municipal buildings, finding ways to reduce city government’s “carbon footprint,” possibly creating a revolving loan fund to entice more businesses with energy-efficient programs to locate in the city, and developing either a municipal solar field or installing wind turbines at Collins Park or both.
Mr. Finkbeiner said the list is by no means final. Priority will be given to projects that both create jobs and reduce the city’s energy consumption, he said.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s spokesman, Meghan Dubyak, said the projects under this program are intended to help city governments operate more efficiently.