By Molly Parker
SCBIZ Daily Staff

NORTH CHARLESTON -- A local developer and a representative from CSX Transportation asked a legislative committee today to consider redrawing the port access road that will serve the shipping terminal under construction on the former Navy base.

The $182 million state road project is aimed at moving truck traffic from the new terminal onto Interstate 26. But its current path would impede plans by CSX railroad and owners of the Macalloy Industrial Park to build an intermodal center, including a rail yard and distribution facilities, on that property.

“What we are looking to do is take a huge amount of trucks off that road,” said Robert Clement, one of the partners in Shipyard Creek Associates LLC, which purchased the former Macalloy Corp. industrial site last year.

The developers’ plan is controversial because it would block Norfolk Southern’s access to the terminals via the southern end of North Charleston, the direction from which any rail access must serve the terminal according to a formal agreement between the S.C. State Ports Authority and the city of North Charleston.

“It just seems to me we have a public relations problem if we let one railroad have a monopoly at the Veterans Terminal and the new terminal on the Navy Yard,” Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell said this morning at the State Ports Authority Ad Hoc Committee meeting in North Charleston.

Lawmakers also expressed concern that reconfiguring the port access road could further delay the port expansion project that has been in the works since 1992. That year, the SPA bought 800 acres on the tip of Daniel Island for its proposed Global Gateway project. Lawmakers squashed that plan a decade later and moved the terminal project to the Navy base.

The more delays that crop up, the “further Charleston will fall behind the eight ball,” said Rep. Wallace Scarborough, who leads the House’s Roads and Bridges Committee. The state has already approved the funding for the road project. Moving the road farther east could also mean reopening the Corps of Engineers environmental impact study, which could add months to the process.

“I just don’t think it is feasible,” Scarborough said, noting he planned to call a committee meeting soon.

John Dillard, CSX’s director of state government affairs, said the railroad has no interest in dragging down the SPA’s plans.

The company aims to “facilitate this terminal and not impede this terminal in any way,” Dillard said.

He said that one railroad has a competitive advantage over another at most ports on the East Coast because of the placement of tracks. CSX could give Norfolk Southern its clients’ containers at railroad interchanges, he said.