SAVANNAH, Ga. – Losing the business of a major automaker hasn’t stopped the Georgia Ports Authority from racing ahead with a $12.7 million expansion of its lots used to store new cars and trucks being shipping through the Port of Brunswick.
Americans have been buying new automobiles at near record numbers this year, and Georgia port officials are betting demand for importing and exporting vehicles will continue to grow at the port 60 miles south of Savannah.
The ports authority’s governing board voted Monday to pave an additional 63 acres at its Colonel’s Island terminal in Brunswick, which already has 422 acres dedicated to parking autos waiting to be loaded onto ships or trucks. The new parking lots will add room for up to 11,000 vehicles.
That investment comes despite Volkswagen’s decision in February to leave Brunswick for the Port of Jacksonville, Fla., just 70 miles to the south. The move pulled roughly 80,000 Volkswagen vehicles a year out of Brunswick, costing the Georgia port about 12 percent of its total auto business.
FILE- In this Oct. 8, 2014 file photo, ship to shore cranes load shipping containers onto jockey trucks from a cargo ship at the Port of Savannah in Savannah, Ga. The top executive over Georgia’s seaports in Savannah and Brunswick said Monday, May 18, 2015, that he expects another record-breaking fiscal year following a busy spring in which East Coast ports benefited from a labor dispute on the West Coast. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton, File)Curtis Foltz, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, said he’s already hearing from other manufacturers interested in filling the void left by Volkswagen.