The Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce on Friday unveiled a plan -- some board members said it's more like a full-scale "attack" -- to drum up support for the expansion project at the former Naval Base. The project has been stalled for months as environmental studies of the site fail to get approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The North Charleston project, estimated to cost at least half a billion dollars, is the port's last and best hope for expansion. A crowded waterfront is making it more difficult for Charleston to compete with growing ports in Georgia and Virginia, where state government ties to ports are much stronger than in South Carolina. The port here relies almost entirely on shipping revenue instead of tax dollars.

Chamber members said during their board meeting Friday they need to step up efforts to advocate port expansion among community residents and to get lawmakers to follow through with promises to help fund the project.

"We are typically quieter in the business community than we should be," said Robert Clement, a Charleston real estate developer and vice chairman of public policy for the chamber. Clement also is working on a large redevelopment project in North Charleston near the proposed site for the new terminal.

"It's time to stand up and really get behind this thing, because we're losing daylight," Clement said.

Chamber members bemoaned the time lost to conflicts over where the port would build.

A previous proposal to expand to Daniel Island, an idea that died because of widespread opposition, once called for a new terminal to be in operation by the end of the year. Port leaders also once hoped the North Charleston project would be done by 2008; Chamber members said Friday it could take until at least 2010.

"We are substantially behind schedule, and we're growing more and more concerned about our ability to compete," Clement said. "There's been tremendous focus on the location of this, on access and all that, but there hasn't been tremendous focus on where the money's going to come from."

The chamber's latest plan to pitch the port project calls for an intense public relations campaign.

In the next two months, a group of chamber board members will start meeting with major players in the project, from the Corps of Engineers to shipping companies that will use the new facility to people who live in the area set to be developed. Business leaders also say they'll step up talks with lawmakers, from Charleston County's legislative delegation to Gov. Mark Sanford, who affect how money flows to the port project. Specifically, they plan to court Sanford for his support on a tax-incentive plan to help lure private developers into the project and shipping business into the area.

Chamber board member Vince Marino of Marine Containers said he already sees his colleagues in the maritime industry beginning to give new business to ports other than Charleston's.

"What's going on just south of us is a major cause for alarm," Marino said. "(Business) has grown in Georgia in leaps and bounds while (Marine Containers') customers here have diminished. Georgia is getting all kinds of support from their state government, and here the problem is a case of a real lack of support in Columbia. I'm at a loss as to why. It's just beyond me."

Lawmakers such as Rep. Bobby Harrell, House Ways and Means Committee chairman, said plenty of legislators are ready to throw their financial support behind the project.

Harrell, R-Charleston, said the first place the state will likely field dollars is toward infrastructure in North Charleston, where new roads must be built to keep up with port-related traffic.

"We'll get behind this not because it's just something for North Charleston but because it's for the port, and the port is something everybody knows has to happen," he said earlier in the week during a Charleston County Legislative Delegation meeting. "When we've talked about the port expansion, we made it clear to everyone the port isn't a Charleston port, it's a state port."

Brian Moody, a Charleston accountant on the chamber board, said the business community has to make lawmakers follow through with that pledge of support.

"If we want the Legislature to listen when the Chamber of Commerce speaks, then it has to speak with a big voice," Moody said.

Byron Miller, spokesman for the State Ports Authority, said the chamber's support for the project hasn't been in doubt, but more vocal advocates are needed to make it a reality.

"It appears it's being taken to the next level," Miller said. "I think in general it's going to take a broad-based effort by those in the business community, by chambers in the state, to keep the focus on the statewide importance of this. It's having all those voices singing in key that will make a difference."

Click here to return to story:
http://www.charleston.net/stories/103004/bus_30chamber.shtml