Port of Los Angeles Preparing for New Terminal Construction

The Port of Los Angeles is about to grow for the first time in decades.

A new marine container terminal will eventually rise at the Port of Los Angeles, the country’s largest port, L.A. Business First reported. Port officials are seeking proposals for the new terminal, dubbed Pier 500.

The facility, along with the neighboring Port of Long Beach, is among the busiest in the U.S. and world, and often cited as a linchpin in a logistics chain that has kept Southern California’s industrial real estate sector a hot spot for decades.

Pier 500 is envisioned as a 200-acre site along the port’s Pier 400 Channel. Once complete, it would bring two new berths and approximately 3,000 feet of new available wharf space to the southern end of Terminal Island at the port. In doing so, the new terminal would increase cargo efficiency at the port by accommodating larger, newer cargo ships.

The proposed Pier 500 project would utilize an existing site where the port identified 124 acres of submerged infrastructure added during the construction of the adjacent Pier 400 more than 20 years ago. Overall, it’s expected it will take about 10 years from pre-development to operation.

“For the first time in a generation, the Port of Los Angeles plans to build a new container terminal to meet global supply chain demand for decades into the future,” Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said in a statement.

Once the port selects an applicant through its request for proposals, officials will work with them in a public-private pre-development agreement. After that, they would determine the project’s financial feasibility, followed by procuring entitlements and tying up any other loose ends needed to begin construction.

The announcement comes after the port saw its busiest month on record in July. That month, the Port handled 1,019,837 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), marking an 8.5 percent increase from the previous July. With the threat of higher tariffs later this year looming, retailers and manufacturers imported goods ahead of time in anticipation of those hikes.

“Shippers have been frontloading their cargo for months to get ahead of tariffs and recent activity at America’s top port really tells that story,” Seroka said at the time. “Port terminals in July were jam-packed with ships loaded with cargo, processed without any delay.”

— Chris Malone Méndez