In 1980, the Federal Government frowned on a $600 million dollar plan to create a major coal port at Port Canaveral that would be served by the Florida East Coast Railway using segments of the NASA Railroad. At that time they were afraid of train interference with the Space Shuttle program. The project was being pushed by Hvide Marine, Florida East Coast Railway, Canaveral Port Authority, joined by Florida Power and Light, when the companies studied the costs of building the rail link themselves across the Banana River, Merritt Island, Sykes Creek and the Indian River a $20 million (1980s) dollar cost was a project killer. Unbelievably among the potential customers released by Hvide, one finds the Jacksonville Electric Authority. Luck is changing for Port Canaveral, and this railroad project, could be its ticket into the big leagues of world cargo ports. Today the Florida East Coast, like Flagler Development and FECI are part of the Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE: “FIG”) a leading global investment manager with approximately $43.7 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2011. That Fort Lauderdale based marine operator is now part of Seacor Holdings, a company with revenues of $2.1 billion. Florida Power and Light became FPL holdings with power generation assets in 20 states, now called Nextera Energy a fortune 200 company. This time around the players are different, Port Canaveral will be joined by the full power of the State of Florida and the Federal Government, not to mention tossing in CSX, Norfolk Southern and a host of other players.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 18:18:06 +0000
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