Officials Harbor High Hopes for Port’s Future

It’s just a 30-acre strip of asphalt surrounded by a gritty backdrop of oil tanks, warehouses and rusting cargo containers at the Port of Hueneme.

But to port executives struggling to carve out a niche among the big commercial ports on the West Coast, the bit of blacktop might as well be paved in gold.

“Am I proud of this?” asked Mike Plisky, president of the Oxnard Harbor District, which manages the port. “Absolutely. I can’t begin to say how important this is for us.”

This undistinguished black square is the port’s newest cargo-handling terminal. Dedicated earlier this month as the International Agricultural Gateway, it increases the port’s size by 50% and is expected to create 250 jobs and pump $100 million into the local economy.

For the Port of Hueneme, the addition represents the latest in a series of moves it has made in recent years to increase its share of foreign trade after its mission as an oil industry hub began to falter.

The moves include construction of a sprawling refrigerated terminal and federal designation of the port as a Foreign Trade Zone, which have helped the port attract clients who import goods from bananas to Volvos.

Those efforts have already borne fruit. This year, for the first time in its 49-year history, the Port of Hueneme cleared more than 1 million tons of cargo, worth about $3.5 billion.

The port now ranks fourth among the state’s 12 commercial harbors in cargo tonnage, and according to a recent study infuses more than $300 million into the Ventura County economy.

Despite that success, the port will face serious challenges in coming years.

With international trade expected to double by 2020, ports around the globe are scrambling to take advantage of the opportunity.

The Port of Hueneme is no exception, but its small size--90 acres--and inability to expand much beyond its current boundaries pose a problem.

“Our success depends on our space and how effectively we use it,” said Kam Quarles, the port’s marketing director. “Right now that’s our biggest limitation, and the real work now and going into the future is how we squeeze the most out of every square inch.”

The Port of Hueneme has a long history of making the most out of the small piece of land hidden behind rows of eucalyptus trees next to the Naval Construction Battalion Center.

Since the port area was first mapped by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542, it has had many incarnations, beginning with a Chumash village named Wyneema, meaning “resting place.”

In 1867, settler Thomas Bard erected a wharf at the port’s present site to ship oil, which had recently been discovered in Ojai, and produce from the county’s then-small agricultural industry.

The wharf thrived as a commercial hub until the Great Depression decimated business and a storm swell destroyed the structure in 1933.

That same year, Bard’s son, Richard, began building Hueneme Harbor, which opened in 1939 as an export point for the county’s growing agriculture industry.

But after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S. government annexed the harbor and converted it to military use.

In 1947 the port was returned to civilian control and for the next 30 years serviced the county’s offshore oil industry until that began to decline in the late 1970s.

Officials were forced into reinventing the port and its mission.

“When it became clear that the oil industry wasn’t going to grow we had to look for something that was on the upswing and international trade was our only real option,” Port Director Bill Buenger said.

That meant, however, competing against larger and more sophisticated ports, such as those in Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Francisco.

By tailoring their operations to serve carriers operating on the fringe of its larger sister ports, officials said the Port of Hueneme was able to carve a lucrative niche for itself.

“We found a lot of firms that weren’t happy with the kind of service they were getting in Los Angeles and other places,” port marketing director Kam Quarles said. “They wanted to be the big fish in a little pond, and here they can be that.”

In 1993 the port broke ground on an $11-million, 140,000-square-foot refrigerated fruit terminal--the largest on the West Coast--and in 1995 added a 40,000-square-foot fruit-shipping facility.

Completion of those projects helped the port land clients such as Del Monte Fresh Produce, Sunkist Growers, and Cool Carriers, which imports bananas from Ecuador.

Since those improvements, banana imports increased from 94,000 metric tons in 1989 to more than 328,000 in 1998.

In that same time, fruit exports have increased by more than 300%, from 42,000 metric tons to about 141,000.

Produce is now the largest commodity handled by the port.

The Port of Hueneme has also benefited by its recent listing as a Foreign Trade Zone, which allows importers to defer tariffs until they are ready to move their products to the market.

That status has made the area a favored point of entry for foreign car makers such as BMW, Jaguar, Mitsubishi and Volvo.

Last year more than 106,000 cars were offloaded at the port. Although no final tallies are available, port officials expect that number to increase to about 135,000 this year.

The port has also benefited from good relations with the longshoremen union. It has not faced the type of labor conflicts that the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have.

“It’s all just a piece of the puzzle,” marketing director Quarles said. “I can’t point to any one thing that has helped us be as successful as we are. . . . It’s a combination of all these factors.”

By far the most serious challenge faced by port officials as they look toward the new century is the Port of Hueneme’s lack of space.

Hemmed in by the city of Port Hueneme and the sprawling naval base, the port has few expansion options.

That has caused port officials to become very selective when signing clients to ensure their operations mesh well with what’s already in existence.

The port’s best bet for the future, officials said, are joint agreements with the Navy to use some of its berths.

For the past four years, the port has been negotiating with the Navy for use of Wharf 3, a large berthing area.

The port uses that wharf to store overflow cargo, but plans for entering a long-term use agreement with the base are still little more than a hopeful dream.

“Dealing with a bureaucracy like that can be a little frustrating,” Plisky said. “But I think it’s an eventuality. . . . I think we can prove this kind of shared-use would be a great benefit for the Navy.”

Quarles said if a deal were ever struck, the port would make a number of capital improvements--including the addition of cargo cranes--that the Navy could use when needed.

The port would also pay for the wharf’s upkeep.

Although Navy officials were unavailable for comment, some observers believe entering into such an agreement could send the wrong message as the Pentagon looks to downsize.

“If it looks like they’re not using it, then somebody might get the idea that the base is too big and target it [for closure],” Plisky said. “But on the other hand, this kind of deal could be a model for bases around the country.”

The port is also ready to begin dredging to deepen the port’s berthing areas from 35 feet to 40 feet to accommodate a new and larger generation of cargo ships.

Officials said they will soon put the project out to bid and hope to have it completed by early in the next century. As international trade continues to increase, officials said the county can expect to realize even greater benefits.

“It’s important to stay ahead of the curve because that’s what has gotten us to where we are today,” Buenger said. “And what we’re doing today we didn’t think we’d be doing 10 years ago, so I think we all have a lot to look forward to.”