Eagles snag Navy Yard battle

Port business and labor leaders were doing high fives yesterday, hoping that a bald eagle's nest would do what they had been unable to do: preserve an opportunity for port expansion.

The nest is on a Navy Yard site where Gov. Rendell, State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo, and other powerful players want to build a new regional produce market. But the same site is coveted by those port interests, who say it is critical to the port's future growth and, possibly, the creation of more than 100,000 jobs.

"We have time. They don't. We can wait for the eagles to hatch," a smiling Boise Butler, president of International Longshoremen's Association Local 1291, said yesterday.

The state, meanwhile, said it would study the federal Endangered Species Act - which could block either project - in search of ways to let development move forward.

The 35 businesses that make up the produce market, meanwhile, will meet today to plan their next move, said Sonny DiCrecchio, general manager of the association that runs the market. They hope that the state will start clearing land for their new market next month and that it can get a permit to move forward and complete it within two years.

Late yesterday, DiCrecchio said: "I don't know what to say now. So much has happened in the last 24 hours."

Uwe Schulz, president of the Ports of the Delaware River Marine Trade Association, hinted that there had been some progress in behind-the-scenes dealings with Rendell. He said the governor had challenged his group to show that significant private investment would be available to expand the port southward into the Navy Yard.

The governor's press office declined to comment.

Schulz said his stakeholder group, which includes terminal operators and others who make money off ships docking there, had strong expressions of interest from major funding sources.

These include the nation's largest terminal operation, SSA Marine Inc., of Seattle, and the Thomas J. Holt family, the largest terminal operator on the Delaware River.

Edward M.A. Zimny of Paul F. Richardson Associates Inc., the New Jersey consulting firm hired by the port interests, said "there is likely to be private money" for all or most of the $300 million expansion plan.

The number of cargo containers arriving in the United States will double over the next seven to 15 years, he said, and Philadelphia is one of the few ports with space to grow.

With new ships costing $50,000 a day to operate, Philadelphia's flexible union contract and the Navy Yard's direct access to three major railroads make it more efficient than rival seaports.

James Walder, local representative of Maersk Line, said his firm had three ships a week docking here from Africa and South America and could expand here.

The produce market rents space in obsolete buildings next to the South Philadelphia Sports Complex from the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., a city economic development agency. It has been seeking a new facility since 2002, to comply with tightening post-9/11 regulations on food shipments. The market also needs room to grow and rail access because of rapidly increasing truck shipping costs.

The market, fed by a steady stream of 18-wheelers from the nation's farmland, is where chefs, retailers, and neighborhood food-buying cooperatives go to shop and haggle over price with 35 competing businesses.

Neither the produce terminal nor the seaport would be compatible with eagles, who desire privacy when nesting.

Both want to build on land at the east end of the former Philadelphia Navy Base's Henry Mustin Air Station. The site is well below the floodplain and would have to be raised, using material dredged from the river, for either use.

And both facilities would be bustling with trucks and noisy cargo-handling machinery.