Panama Canal expansion promises more opportunities for Little Rock Port, Arkansas River transportation

Editor’s note: Chris Mathews is CEO of National Custom Hollow Metal Doors and Maple Leaf Awning and Canvas. He was a member of the Little Rock Port Authority Board of Directors from 2006-2016 serving as chair from 2014-2016. Opinions, commentary and other essays posted in this space are wholly the view of the author(s). They may not represent the opinion of the owners of Talk Business & Politics.
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To foster continued economic development, communities must keep investing in infrastructure and provide suitable locations for businesses to locate and grow. Little Rock offers the perfect mix.

When I arrived in Little Rock more than twenty years ago, I found the greatest economic development asset possible: good people. I now know, without a doubt, that Arkansans are some of the hardest working and best-hearted people in the country. It was their hospitality that brought me here from New Jersey, and it was their continued kindness that allowed me to buy and grow two businesses of my own.

More than 50 years ago, the citizens of Little Rock wisely voted to invest public funds in the future by creating and funding the Port of Little Rock. With access to navigable rivers, railways, interstates and airports, the port is an economic developer’s dream location. From the beginning, it was the access, the location, and the people that showed my company, that this was where we should open a factory in 1995. Yet, the port would remain in an adolescent phase until the hiring of Paul Latture.

Paul had a rare business intuition. He, much like myself, saw the great potential in the people of Little Rock and the ability of the Port to help realize that potential. His tenure as executive director saw the port utilize its space more efficiently. For 10 years, I have had the honor of sitting on the port’s Board of Directors, and have served as its chair for the past two years. As chairman, I knew the port was an amazing community asset that provided jobs and added to our economy. Yet, the port’s impact has yet to be truly quantified. In 2015, the Board completed an economic impact study to measure the influence the port has had on Little Rock and its surrounding area’s economy.

While the Board assumed that the port created jobs, the results of the study were larger than the Board ever imagined. The study showed a $5.1 billion economic impact to central Arkansas over the previous 10 years. The port is now home to 41 different companies employing more than 3,000 employees. These employees create products and goods, which are shipped to more than 60 countries every year. This is something in which our community should take pride.

To assist these companies in transporting their products, the port offers its own private railroad that connects companies to both the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroads. The Port and its slackwater harbor also connect companies to the McClellan-Kerr Navigation System and eventually to the world. While infrastructure, taxes and regulations are critical to economic development, nothing is more important to a company than its ability to transport products in a reliable and cost-effective manner.

Few know this, but Arkansas offers the third highest number of navigable inland waterway miles in the country. The port is also home to Foreign Trade Zone 14, which allows companies doing international business to store products and raw materials duty-free.

With the recently completed Panama Canal expansion, an increase in megaships carrying thousands of containers is expected to have a huge impact on the movement of product and commodities. Many of these ships will make port in New Orleans, placing their containers on barges for transport up the Mississippi River.

Our goal must be to prepare Little Rock for the increased tonnage and encourage the increased traffic to flow up the Arkansas River and into the Little Rock Port Authority. Meeting this goal will likely require the placement of additional infrastructure to utilize container shipping. I am confident the port’s current Executive Director Bryan Day will continue to work with the Board to grow jobs and opportunity for the community. In the coming years, I’m confident the port will play an even larger role in overall economic development as the people of Little Rock continue to make long-term investment in its expansion.

I have enjoyed my time on the Board and feel that I, along with my colleagues, have made good decisions to grow this incredible economic resource. I hope that the residents of Little Rock and our surrounding communities will continue to support the port’s mission to become the best inland port in America.