The Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners has unanimously approved a $123 million dredging and wharf building contract that officially starts construction of its Middle Harbor Redevelopment Project. The contract awarded to a joint venture of the Seattle-based Manson and Connolly construction companies covers the first part of a $1 billion modernization and consolidation of two aging shipping terminals into one state-of-the-art container terminal with twice the cargo capacity.
The overall project is planned to take nine years. This first part – which includes building wharfs, dredging one slip and filling in another – is expected to start this spring and take 22 months. “We’re talking about a tremendously positive economic impact for this region – this contract alone will create 670 jobs over a nearly two-year period, and is one of the biggest contracts awarded by the port,” says Richard D. Steinke, Port of Long Beach executive director. “We’re looking forward to this first phase of redeveloping Middle Harbor.”
According to the port, the Middle Harbor project’s environmental technologies and efficiencies will allow the redeveloped terminal to move additional cargo and create thousands of new goods-movement jobs while cutting pollution in half.
