Plans call for new Cairo inland waterway port to be ready in three years

A timeline was announced Tuesday for the new Alexander Cairo Port District in Cairo, Illinois, with groundbreaking planned at the end of next year and completion in late 2024.

Thanks in part to a $40 million construction grant promised last year by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and an April labor agreement with the Illinois AFL-CIO, more than 500 jobs are expected to be created by the estimated $125 million to $150 million public-private partnership.

"The charge I have been given by the (district), by the good people of Cairo and the State of Illinois is to get this port built as quickly as possible and at as low a cost as possible (and) to make it as highly profitable as it can be," said Todd Ely of Springfield, Illinois-based Ely Consulting Group, the primary overall consultant and lead contractor, in a virtual presentation to more than 70 webinar participants.

"Making the port highly profitable is critical so that those (revenues) can be reinvested in the community and in Southern Illinois and to the benefit of our good friends in western Kentucky, Southeast Missouri and western Tennessee."

"Cairo is heartbreakingly poor," Ely added, saying the economic development generated by the port district will allow Illinois' southernmost city to bring back "grocery stores, gas stations and restaurants."

Ely said a "state-of-the-art" Cairo port with an emphasis on "greenfield development and renewable energy," to be located on the Mississippi River side and north of the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, will have four strategic advantages over competitor ports.

• 80% of all U.S. inland barge traffic passes Cairo.
• More than 60% of the U.S. population is within an eight-hour drive.
• A Class 1 railroad (Canadian National), three major highways and Cairo Regional Airport serve the area.
• There are no locks, no dams nor any ice between Cairo and the Gulf of Mexico.

John Vickerman of Virginia-based Vickerman and Associates was hired by Ely because his firm has expertise in designing 67 of the 90 deep-water general cargo ports in North America.

"We believe Cairo could answer the call to be a port hub, not devoted to a single commodity," said Vickerman, who noted Cairo's port could be ideal for the movement of containers on barges, coiled steel, scrap metal, agricultural fertilizer, corn, grain and soybeans, biofuels and biomass pellets, select high value liquids and wind energy components.

Illinois, Vickerman added, is the nation's No. 2 producer of corn and soybeans.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker speaks Aug. 4, 2020, during a press conference at Magnolia Manor in Cairo, Illinois, to announce the State of Illinois will provide $40 million to build the Alexander Cairo Port, and the state will immediately grant $4 million to the Alexander Cairo Port District to fund final engineering, permitting and site preparation at the new port.Southeast Missourian file

Speed

Ely said the planned 150-acre Alexander Cairo Port District will be able to move materials through faster and more reliably and at a lower cost than many other ports.

The consultant pointed to plans for four all-electric "gantry" cranes, designed to move cargo directly from a barge to a truck or to a rail line without any additional handling.

"Product can be moved with these cranes with one lift rather than three," Ely said, adding "next-generation" container vessels are also envisioned, able to carry more than two times the capacity of a traditional deck or hopper barge.

Pritzker, in remarks in Cairo on Aug. 4, 2020, said the port development will be "one of the largest projects in Southern Illinois in a generation," adding, "(Cairo) is a region that has been left out and left behind for far too long."