[CPEO-BIF] New Jersey targets BF sites for portfields initiative

["Robert Hersh" <b_hersh@verizon.net>]

Tainted sites seen as way to aid ports
The Record
Thursday, March 8, 2007
By HUGH R. MORLEY
	

CARTERET -- New Jersey began a campaign Wednesday to market brownfields
areas around the state's ports as a solution to the rising volume of cargo
brought to the region by world trade.

State officials and business leaders are touting the environmentally tainted
sites as prime real estate on which to build distribution and logistics hubs
that will boost the local economy.

To make their point, the organizers of the effort - called Portfields
Initiative - invited 150 government leaders and commercial real estate
brokers to a translucent-walled tent erected inside a newly built warehouse
on one of the brownfields in Carteret.

The four-year-old Portfields Initiative, a partnership between EDA and the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was designed to create a support
network for Port Elizabeth and Port Newark. The Port Authority expects the
volume of goods handled by the ports to double in 10 years.

As yellow mechanical diggers tore into a red mound of snow-laden earth
outside, and a chill wind whistled around the 1.2 million-square-foot empty
warehouse, state officials made their pitch.

"What we are seeing is a tremendous growth in Port Elizabeth and Port
Newark," said Caren Franzini, chief executive officer of the New Jersey
Economic Development Authority (EDA). "If we can't handle the cargo, we
can't handle the growth."

If that happens, she added, importers will send goods through other East
Coast ports such as Norfolk, Va., or Savannah, Ga., or they will set up
distribution centers in Pennsylvania or Delaware.

To help meet the demand, the state targeted 17 brownfield sites within 25
miles of the ports -- in Hudson, Union, Middlesex and Essex counties -- that
could each take 350,000 square feet of warehouse or distribution space.

For the entire article, see:
<http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyOSZmZ2
JlbDdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5NzA4OTU3NyZ5cmlyeTdmNzE3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTI=>

Bob Hersh 
CPEO

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