Business mogul helps revive Detroit shipping port

Highlights of the story:

.  The Detroit Marine Terminal, a once bustling port that handled hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo annually before a financial crisis shut it down a year ago, will reopen this month under new management and a new name.

.  Grosse Pointe millionaire Manuel J. “Matty” Moroun is part of the new leadership team at the terminal, which will be known as the Port of Detroit.

.  The Ambassador Port Co. in Detroit, an affiliate of Moroun’s Warren-based company, CenTra Inc., agreed to pay off $3 million in bonds the previous owner defaulted on in exchange for becoming a managing partner. CenTra and its related companies own and operate hundreds of trucks as well as local rail lines.

.  “We plan to make the Port of Detroit a true intermodal facility where materials flow in and out and where we easily transfer cargo containers and products between ships, trucks and rail cars,” said Dan Stamper, a director of Ambassador Port Co.

.  Stamper, also president of Moroun’s Detroit International Bridge Co., which owns and operates the Ambassador Bridge, said shipping by vessel is about 20 percent cheaper than rail, truck or air service.

.  “We see a lot of potential for the port,” he said. “We feel it could help reduce truck traffic on public roads and the bridge.”

.  The 35-acre Port of Detroit complex runs 2,150 feet along the Detroit River and can simultaneously handle three large vessels up to 1,000 feet in length.

.  It will be staffed with 50 full-time workers to start, with about 200 expected to be operating the terminal by summer’s end.

.  “We want to see where we can reduce traffic on our crowded highways and rail lines and transfer that to more environmentally sensitive water-borne shipments,” said Jamian, past executive director of the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority and a former state lawmaker.

.  Jamian’s department will look at shipments now flowing between Detroit, Port Huron, Toronto, Montreal and several Midwest cities that border major waterways.

.  “The Port of Detroit,” he said, “should really help to drive down transportation costs for the entire Metro Detroit region.”