More trucks, ships, cars ahead: Philadelphia port buys rail yard for $90 million
The expansion will help Holt’s container services add jobs. It also benefits Hyundai Glovis, which imports cars from Korea
PhilaPort, the state agency that owns Philadelphia’s seaport facilities, says it has agreed to buy a more than 150-acre train yard from Norfolk Southern Corp. to make room for container storage and other cargo facilities that could boost employment at the Delaware River shipping complex.
The agency will pay the railroad $90 million, funded by the state, according to PhilaPort. “We are very appreciative” of Gov. Josh Shapiro and other state officials who supported the purchase, said Ryan Mulvey, the port’s top lobbyist.
Norfolk Southern acquired the property in 2008 for $1 from the Delaware River Port Authority, which operates toll bridges across the river, according to city records.
The railroad improved the property with a freight yard, which the port will take over, so port businesses can load and unload train cargo faster.
“This is a game-changer for us. This allows the port to continue to grow,” said Tom Holt Jr., whose family-owned company, Holt Logistics, moves 3,000 trailers a day through the port agency’s nearby Packer Avenue shipping terminal complex. The 105-acre facility handles fresh and frozen foods, pharmaceuticals, and “anything in containers, really.”
He said the Holts could double container volume with the new space.
The additional space could also benefit Hyundai Glovis, the Korean company that imports Hyundai and Kia vehicles through the port, port officials said.
Holt credited state and port officials and Norfolk Southern with cooperating on the deal. “They want to see the jobs,” he added.
“We had a record 840,000 containers and 280,000 vehicles” last year and need the new space to grow, Mulvey said. “This couldn’t be at a more critical time.”
The purchase “frees up land in the terminal. The quicker you can move it out of the port, the more you can move in and out faster,” he said.
The railroad property is “the last available land at a unique nexus of deep water, highway, and rail access,” the agency said in a statement, echoing what Mulvey told the Pennsylvania House Transportation Committee last year as he sought state money to help fund the deal.
Ben Kirschner, Gov. Shapiro’s chief transformation officer, was “relentless” in pushing state funding for the project, said William Sasso, a lawyer for the Holts who has worked on Shapiro’s economic development agenda. He said other big Philadelphia projects are in the works.
Philadelphia is in tough competition with neighboring ports. Delaware has committed almost $200 million to build a new container terminal near the Port of Wilmington in a partnership with a private operator, though detailed plans are still in the works. The Swiss shipping line Mediterranean Shipping Co. is developing a terminal in the Port of Baltimore.
While Philadelphia has seen cargos grow recently, it is still a relatively small player among U.S. ports in international trade. The Port of New York and New Jersey, whose cranes on the Port Elizabeth waterfront alone outnumber Philadelphia’s, handled 7.8 million container units in 2023 — more than tenfold Philadelphia’s volume.
In his pitch to legislators last year, Mulvey said PhilaPort’s operations support 12,000 Philadelphia-area jobs, generating $90 million in state and local taxes. He said developing the Norfolk Southern yard could generate an additional $38 million in revenue and thousands more jobs.
Under Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration, the state invested more than $500 million in new electric cranes and other equipment at Packer Avenue, a 155-acre auto processing center at PhilaPort’s Southport facility on the former Navy base, and new warehouses.
The Norfolk Southern yard, north of the Navy’s former Mustin Field, adjoins PhilaPort’s Southport facility, once part of the U.S. Navy base.
After the Navy shut its yard in 1996, the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. (PIDC) took over much of the property to redevelop vacant parcels and encouraged new investment like the railroad yard. The neighborhood is now home to Navy and corporate offices, apartments, Hanwha Philly Shipyard, and Rhoads Industries, a military ship repair contractor. Several hundred acres were set aside for port expansion, including the area now known as Southport.
In 2014, PhilaPort considered converting Southport into a modern container terminal — an idea that the City Controller’s Office projected would have maximized its economic impact.
Port and state officials decided instead to upgrade the decades-old Packer Avenue terminal, operated by Gloucester City-based Holt, and dedicate Southport to autos, where cars are stored before heading to dealer showrooms.