14 Reasons Why This Proposal Will Cripple the City,
the Port, and the People of Camden

1. To return to self sufficiency, the City needs a strong economy. To develop a strong economy, the City must attract new employers and new jobs. But, first, it must preserve existing jobs.

The plan would displace 168 existing businesses currently operating successfully in the proposed redevelopment area. Some of these businesses are unique and represent regional, national, or global market leaders.

Displacing successful, Camden-based businesses and eliminating existing jobs sends the wrong message to everyone, including City and County taxpayers.

2. A strong City economy needs a strong port district. The port district is one of the City's most significant private sector economic engines. Through the South Jersey Port Corporation (SJPC), the Port operates two terminals—at Broadway and at Beckett Street. Combined, the two terminals support more than 3,800 jobs. This number represents one out of every nine jobs in the City and one of every six in the private sector.

Camden's port facilities serve as a gateway to the global economy. In 2003, they set an all-time record for cargo, handling more than 3.1 million tons. Bulk cargo handled by local workers increased by 73%, break-bulk cargo (e.g., steel, fruit, wood and cocoa) by 6, and ship days at the Port by 12%.

More important, a recent Army Corps of Engineers Benefits Study has forecast dramatic growth for Delaware River ports in the coming decades. Though much of this growth is expected to be in tanker traffic, dry bulk—a Camden specialty—and container volumes are predicted to double over the period. Camden itself is forecast to have a 54% increase in trade according to study.

The proposed plan threatens the existence of the Beckett Street Terminal and the viability of the Port as a whole.

3. A strong port requires an active and enhanced terminal at Beckett Street. More than 1,000 port jobs are supported by the Beckett Street Terminal, which includes approximately 3,400 feet of waterfront pier access and nearly 1,000,000 square feet of warehousing capacity.

To remain competitive and keep family-sustaining jobs, the Port should actually be enhancing its facilities to allow it to capture new jobs and retain existing customers.

In addition, the SJPC should have the space to expand its presence with new facilities‹both inside and outside the City.

4. The City needs jobs. The existing businesses targeted by the City for closure employ more than 2,400 workers. These workers generate more than $97.5 million in personal income, which rolls over numerous times in the regional economy and which generates an estimated 1,400 additional jobs in Camden.

Just the port's key employers alone account for 729 jobs and the loss of each key waterfront job produces the negative ripple effect of 3.25 lost jobs.

5. Camden residents needs jobs. One out of every seven jobs that will be lost in the port district is held by a resident of Camden. The City cannot afford to eliminate employment for 350 of its residents.

Port jobs are "good jobs." The annual wage for port-related workers averages $39,800. By contrast, the City¹s per capita income averages $9,800 and median household income averages $23,421.

6. The City and the region need business revenue. Key waterfront employers generate more than $192 million in sales annually, which is 60% of the sales generated in the entire Central Waterfront District and close to 10% of all sales city-wide.

Each dollar lost at the port equates to the ultimate loss of $1.50 to the city as a whole. Thus, the impact of the loss of these sales would grow to more than $303 million as the effect rippled across the region.

7. The City and the region need tax revenue. Eliminating the 2,400 existing jobs would cost the City $97.5 million in lost wages and the region would lose $202 million.

The lost tax revenue for the State and affected municipalities would exceed $12 million.

8. The City can't afford to relocate or buy out the existing businesses. By the Planning Department's own estimation, the City will have to pay at least $800,000 million to buy out and relocate the existing businesses that will be displaced if the proposed plan is approved.

More accurate estimates place the relocation/buy out costs in excess of $1 billion.

9. The City can't afford to send the wrong message to Port customers or Port workers. More than 20,000 people are employed by the customers of the port.

Fruit, plywood, home heating oil, building materials, and road salt, are the products these customers bring through the port. Each local, regional, national, and international transaction represents a boost for the local economy.

Closing down these businesses sends the wrong message about the region's interest in creating and keeping good jobs, as well as its intent to be a center of commerce.

As important, even the hint of change or loss of berthing space can lead shippers to protect themselves by seeking other ports. That means that the loss of jobs to Camden could mean the loss of jobs to the entire region as shippers transfer their business to Baltimore, Newark, or even the Great Lakes.

10. The Camden Redevelopment Agency sends the wrong message to all of its constituents by ignoring the City's own Master Plan. The proposed redevelopment plan ignores a key premise of the City's Master Plan, which was adopted only two and a half years ago, after an extensive public input process.

Recognizing the need to maintain and support the Port, the Master Plan declares in its Summary that "improving the port's infrastructure system and encouraging private industrial development on surplus port lands will expand jobs and business growth."

In addition, the Master Plan summary specifically sites port uses in the area proposed for redevelopment: "Port related industrial uses are proposed to contain the Port of Camden shipping and cargo processing facilities along the Delaware River in the Central Waterfront and Waterfront South neighborhoods. Surplus and underutilized SJPC property in the proposed port related industrial land use district is recommended to be released for private redevelopment as industrial and port related business activities." (emphasis supplied).

The summary also states that "industrial land use proposals are geared toward maintaining existing industrial businesses, providing development areas for urban industrial parks and capitalizing upon the Port of Camden as a potential generator of additional private industrial development activity." (emphasis supplied).

11. The City, the County, and the State can't afford the huge, upfront, taxpayer-funded remediation costs necessary to qualify brownfields within the Central Waterfront District for proposed residential use. A substantial percentage of the land that would be designated for redevelopment in the proposed plan is contaminated—as a result of over a century of various industrial uses.

The cost to the City, County, or State to remediate this property for residential or recreational use will, in all probability, exceed $ 100 million. That is money that the City and the taxpayers who support it simply do not have.

12. A "working waterfront" enhances plans to redevelop surrounding neighborhoods. The revitalization of the Downtown Business District and the Lanning Square and Bergen Square neighborhoods is enhanced by a vibrant "working waterfront."

There are examples across the country and around the world which demonstrate that successful residential environments and "working waterfronts" can thrive side-by-side.

In addition to Baltimore's world-renowned Inner Harbor, the Jack London Square neighborhood in Oakland, CA, the port neighborhood in Tacoma, WA, and the Historic District in Charleston, SC all attest to the viability of the concept of residential/working waterfront coexistence.

13. Forward-thinking waterfront communities actively protect "working waterfronts" from residential encroachment. The protection of "working waterfronts" is becoming a recognized development principle in forward-thinking communities such as Baltimore.

As the Baltimore Sun reported in early December of last year in an article headlined "City is Shifting Gears to Preserve Industry." the city has "moved to protect Baltimore's historic waterfront industries from condo_creep, assuring maritime interests that the deep water access their businesses require won't be over taken by residential and office developments that covet their harbor views."

Specifically, the community that is home to the nation's premier working waterfront/entertainment district/residential enclave, recently completed a study which looked at industrial land all over the city. Policy makers and citizens alike recognized that deep-water access is an increasingly rare asset which should be preserved to keep jobs and ratables.

The study determined that significant sections of the harbor needed to be preserved for industrial/port uses. To that end, the study recommended the creation of special zoning districts to ensure that preservation.

Similarly, Philadelphia is completing a study of industrial land use on the riverfront north of the Ben Franklin Bridge, When complete, the findings will provide policy makers with the information they need to determine which of the firms along the riverfront are tied to the water, which can move, and, for those businesses that are able to move, where they can relocate so that ratables and jobs will not be lost.

14. Promoting residential development as a substitute for the port/industrial waterfront is not good, long-term economic policy. Alternative strategies for a win-win scenario include residential development to the north of the waterfront entertainment district rather than to the south. The riverfront land north of Campbell's Field and the Ben Franklin Bridge is now used for less economically important and viable long term purposes than the Port property south of the entertainment district. The land to the north simply does not create the thousands of jobs for working families that the threatened Beckett Street Terminal does.

The Waterfront Alliance to Save the Port District comprises businesses currently operating in the proposed redevelopment area, employees of port-related businesses, concerned citizens, residents, and others committed to maintaining a viable, working waterfront that contributes to Camden's economic revitalization.

Most of the business in the Alliance would be forced to either close or relocate if the plan now under consideration is adopted and ratified by City Council.

For more information, please call the Alliance representative,
Joanne Williams, at 215-569-8360.