By Karen E. ThuermerAt a time when ports are scrambling to find ways to expand their containerized business, a large track of land owned by General Motors Corp. (GM) adjacent to the Port of Baltimore has come available for bids. The beauty of the site is it sits at the confluence of two major interstates, Interstate 95 and Interstate 895. Interstate 95 is the major north-south interstate on the Eastern Seaboard that directly feed large markets all the way from Boston to Miami. Woe be to the Port of Baltimore, the Maryland Port Administration (MPA) has no mandate that allows it to bid on this track of land. In other words, the site is basically off limits for any port-owned expansion opportunity. Meanwhile, its largest competitor, the Virginia Port Authority, is expanding rapidly with the new Maersk Terminal and the potential of Craney Island. As Aris Melissaratos, secretary of the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, recently told the local press, “The state should not be getting into the development business. The state buying that entire piece would not be the most appropriate use for that land. But the port is interested in some of it, and we’ve passed along those desires to GM.” Since the site is next to the Seagirt Marine Terminal, the Port of Baltimore‚s largest pure container facility, the port would ideally at least like to have a “small strip” of 10 to 15 acres to make a rail transfer station. Whether that will happen is yet to be seen. What is obviously, the future development and use of the parcel is currently a wild card as to whether it will contribute to business at the port. “Unfortunate for us, there seems to be a great deal of interesting in the site,” says F. Brooks Royster, III, MPA executive director. In other words, the value of the property will certainly escalate and perhaps be out of reach for MPA. Dozens of groups have already submitted Requests for Proposals (RFPs) on the site. GM set an August 1 deadline for RFPs for the 185 acres that houses its now closed 3 million square foot assembly plant that had produced Chevrolet Astro and GMC Safari vans. The Chevy Astro was one of 2.3 million vehicles built there over seven decades. The factory, which opened in 1935 to build Chevrolet cars and trucks, had employed 1,100 workers and has been assembling the aging Astro and Safari since 1985. Although previous labor agreements prohibited plant closings, a United Auto Workers-GM contract ratified in 2003 approved the Baltimore plant for closure because of sinking sales of the aging Chevrolet Astro and GMC Safari vans. General Motors formally closed the 70-year-old Baltimore manufacturing plant in May. Now GM expects to fast-track the sale of the 185-acre industrial property on the city’s eastern fringe. Dozens of developers are expressing interest in the site and have toured the Broening Highway plant. “Most plans have involved scrapping the existing [building] and redeveloping it with new industrial product,” says David W. Baird, a senior vice president and director of Trammell Crow Co., the real estate brokerage, which is bidding on the GM property. “The existing buildings are highly inefficient and virtually unusable for anything other than auto manufacturing.” GM plans to clean up the site and rid it of any environmentally hazardous waste. Nevertheless, the property has gotten one of the highest levels of interest, from a developer standpoint. “Or, of any property we’ve put on the market recently,” says John McDonald, a GM spokesman. McDonald noted the plant’s prime location, the scarcity of large tracts of developable land in the region and a strong push by state officials as reasons. Normally it takes the automaker three to five years to sell surplus property. The field of candidates is expected to include institutional investors - some with local or other developers as partners - large national developers, regional developers and real estate investment trusts. Robert L. Hannon, assistant secretary at the Maryla