b'18American Journal ofTransportation ajot.comNortheast expandingMaritime renaissancewarehouse inventory inTheres a maritime renaissance building in the Northeast.response to cargo surge investments.By AJOT Staff A shift away from e-commerce sees more devel- There is a maritime renaissance buildingPark May 24, 2022, AJOT.com] And the big opment at the periphery of metro areas; higherin the Northeast Corridor (NEC). A quick visitbusinessfortheportishandlingthero/ro wages help attract workers to new facilities. to any one of a more than a dozen small portsships bringing in autos to North Atlantic Dis-along the Corridors long coastline and eventribution (NORAD), the onsite auto processor By Peter Buxbaum, AJOT up the Hudson River, there is activity activ- which opened its doors in 1986 and has pro-ity that no one would have imagined a couplecessed nearly five million vehicles. IfshippersareseriousisclosertoNew YorkCity,of decades ago. Many of these ports were onceAs impressive as the auto processing busi-about keeping a healthy pro- hascauseddeveloperstoconsidered left for dead, just another backwa- ness has been, in the future the Port of Davis-portion of their diverted West- search for opportunities furtherter, a casualty of containerization. But thereville may well be tagged as the place where it Coastcargointheeast,aseast on Long Island, mean- isnowabrightfutureformanysmallandall beganthe offshore wind power boom.many claim, they need to being,SuffolkCounty,notedmedium sized ports in the region. ThePortofDavisvillewasthestaging supported by a growing inven- Mastrogiannis.Historically,And you might say it started, in the unlike- area for the Block Island Wind Farm, origi-tory of warehousing options totheEasternSuffolksubmar- liest of all places, in the Port of Davisville, innally launched in 2009 as a pilot project and accommodate those increases.ket has had little warehouseQuonset Point, Rhode Island. Nationwide, itnow the first commercial offshore wind farm IntheNortheast,investorsdevelopment. isnt a well-known port, although it should bein the US. The five-turbine, 30 MW project and logistics operators appearThe same phenomenon isas it has been a top ten auto processing portwas developed by Deepwater Wind in 2009 as to be responding, by growingbeing seen in the Boston area,(handling 300,000 a year until COVID througha pilot project, now rsted US Offshore Wind capacity in a region with tightwhere the logistics needs ofa monkey wrench into the auto business). The[partoftheDanishrstedGroup,thelarg-vacancy rates.themetropolitanregionarePort is part of the Quonset Business Park, runest developer of offshore wind farms and the Somuchso,thatthingsincreasinglybeingsatisfiedby the quasi-state agency Quonset Develop- undisputed leader in the US market with 5,000 aregettingalittlecrowded,(INVENTORYcontinuedment Corporation (QDC). [See QDCs Kinggigawatts of projects on the East Coast] and motivatingthebuild-outofon page 25) outlinesdevelopmentsatQuonsetBusiness(RENAISSANCEcontinued on page 22)propertiesontheregions periphery. Also crowded is the labor market, but in the North-east,theabilityofindustrial workerstocommandhigher wagesactuallyassuresthat employers will be able to staff their new facilities.The Port of New York and NewJerseyin2022became the second busiest port in the country,movingaheadof LongBeach.Withretailers andmanufacturersinvesting innewfacilitiesintheNew Jersey port region, the vacancy rate ticked higher in the first part of this year to 3.6%, due to the delivery of new product tothemarket,accordingto JohnObeid,seniorresearch manager at the real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.Positive net absorptionhow many more square feet wereleasedthanwasmade availableonthemarketapproached 2.5 million in the regionlastyear,according toObeid,and,inthefourth quarteralone,over1.2mil-lion square feet became avail-ableintheportarea.This year, logistics players such as UPS and major importers like Samsungmovedintolarge facilities in the port region. But, with the robust build-ing seen in the last few years, developable sites are limited in New Jersey, noted a Cush-man & Wakefield report.Elsewhere in the New York metropolitan area, demand for spaceinLongIslandsawa spateofgroundbreakingsin 2022. Warehouse completions neared 2 million square feet lastyear,andthepipeline includedanother1million, most slated for completion in third quarter of 2023. New developmentsarebreaking ground quarterly, said Dimi-triMastrogiannis,aCush-manresearchanalyst.The proposedpipelinehassur-passed 12 million square feet withovertwo-thirdsofthat located in Eastern Suffolk.Thelackofvacantland inNassauCounty,which'