The Latest News on the Proposed Port Project at Coos Bay

A community forum was held on March 25 to discuss a proposal to build a new container terminal at the Port of Coos Bay on Oregon’s coast. Attending the meeting were Port officials and members of the Concerned Citizens of Empire, the town which would neighbor the prospective container gateway.

According to local news reports, there was no discussion of the project’s economic feasibility or how it would lure significant volumes of containerized shipments away from existing ports in the Pacific Northwest.

Much of the discussion instead involved the project’s promised beneficial impact on Oregon’s mid-coast region, which has been in economic decline for years.

No member of the Port of Coos Bay executive staff or its board of commissioners appears to have any experience in large ship operations. North Point, the Kansas City-based private developer backing the project, did not send a representative to the session.