Port Tampa Bay’s diversification is ‘helping us through this pandemic’ - Tampa Bay Times

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TAMPA — You don’t work somewhere for 39 years without becoming a historian of the place along the way.

For John Thorington, that’s meant tracing the growth of the Tampa Bay area on an arc that parallels the evolution of the port.

“The city really grew up around the port,” said Thorington, 61, who retired at the end of May as the vice president of government affairs for Port Tampa Bay. In that job, he directed the port’s legislative agenda at the local, state and federal levels and oversaw community outreach initiatives. “The commercial side of the port goes back 160, 170 years. It was important then, and it’s important now.”

Tampa’s port started as an export point for cattle headed to Cuba in the mid-1800s. Then the discovery of phosphate in Polk County during the 1880s transformed the city into a hub for the fertilizer industry.

These days, phosphate is the No. 2 cargo moving through the port — petroleum is first — and the port is trying to broaden its lines of business to include more forms of cargo (shipping containers and refrigerated produce) and people (cruise ship passengers).

John Thorington [Port Tampa Bay]

While the cruise ship business has suspended voyages, Thorington told the Tampa Bay Times last week he thinks the port has positioned itself with some forward-looking projects that will help the regional economy recover after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. As one example, he pointed to last year’s $63 million dredging project to widen and deepen the Big Bend Channel. That will allow bigger ships to call at factories, warehouses and ship-to-shore cargo distributors planned at the 270-acre Port Redwing terminals.

Related: Tampa port's expansion of Big Bend channel done a year early

Here is the conversation, edited for length and clarity:

How did you come to the port?

I went to Auburn University. I got a bachelor of science degree in marketing in 1980 and then I got an MBA in 1981. At that time, the port was looking to expand its marketing department, so I joined the port in an entry-level marketing position, and I worked in marketing until 1999 when we had a reorganization and I moved into the government relations position that I currently hold.

How was the organization different then?

We had about 80 people at the time, so it was much smaller. We were working out of an old naval shipyard building over at what is now called Port Ybor. It was part of a facility that was building ships for the U.S. military during World War II. It was an old steel fabrication shop.

What were operations on the docks like?

We were just in the infancy of the cruise business. We had almost no container business. We had a lot of phosphate fertilizer business, and we had the petroleum business.

We didn’t have as much land. Hookers Point had not been fully filled in. It was being filled in. The creation of new land through environmentally responsible dredge-and-fill projects has been a great way for the port to build its platform so it can contribute more economic impact to the region. We had not acquired the properties down in Port Redwing that we have now. Down in Port Redwing we’re basically building a whole new port now.

The first regularly scheduled cruise business that we had was called Bahama Cruise Line and that was in 1981. Then in 1982 Holland America Line announced they were coming to Tampa. That just launched us into prominence as a cruise port. Holland America had their first sailing from the port on Nov. 16, 1982, and it was a big deal. The whole community turned out for it.

Of course now, we’ve been doing the last couple of years a million cruise passengers a year. The movement of the cruise business is a good indicator of the diversification of the port, which is today helping us through this pandemic. It helped us through the Great Recession.

What challenges do you expect the port will need to address in the future?

The port has tremendous properties on deep water. We still have property at Hookers Point, down at Port Redwing and in other areas. Where we can add new property or acquire new property we’re doing it, like the East Port development. That gives us room to grow and build large projects. Ardent Mills is moving from downtown to Port Redwing.

Related: Port Tampa Bay closes deal to move flour mill out of downtown Tampa

The other piece I would say is our proximity to the I-4 corridor: 10 million people, 75 million visitors, over 300 distribution centers. We’re more and more in the global logistics industry. The container business has dramatically changed and been a tremendously positive development for the port. The three new services started in 2019, the trans-Pacific container services with three of the largest global container shipping consortiums in the world, are really historic events.

We need to be able to do the kinds of things we’ve been doing. Maybe the perfect example would be the Big Bend channel project. Five entities supported that project, and it wouldn’t have happened if all five hadn’t supported it: Mosaic, Tampa Electric, the port, the federal government and the state government. Together, we were able to contribute funds to get that project done. Probably what you’re going to continue to see in the future are these public-private partnerships.

The Army Corps of Engineers, the Florida Department of Transportation, Port Tampa Bay, the Mosaic fertilizer company and Tampa Electric all contributed to a $63 million project to deepen and widen the Big Bend channel at Port Tampa Bay. (Photo via Port Tampa Bay)

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