Hall County District 3 Commissioner Gregg Poole Tuesday evening joined WDUN’s The Drive at 5 with Caleb Hutchins to discuss his view of the upcoming Inland Port.
The Inland Port is a 104-acre project that plans to link the Port of Savannah to Hall County and Gainesville, providing what officials say will be a major boost to the Northeast Georgia economy. The railroad route will offset a 600-mile truck roundtrip and decongest Georgia highways, according to the GPA.
“All the containers are going to be shipped on the railroad tracks, they’ll be coming from Savannah, and they’ll be coming up here instead of coming up on trucks,” Poole said. “It used to be that all the trucks would go to Savannah, and pick up all these containers in the trucks and truck them up. So now they're going to be coming in via rail. And they're going to be set up there and they'll be offloaded there.”
The Inland Port will be located near the Kubota Manufacturing facility, at a junction where White Sulphur Road crosses the already-existing railroad tracks.
As the Inland Port nears the start of site clearing and construction, many Hall County citizens have previously expressed concerns about the future impact on resident’s daily life.
“The biggest concern that we met with people from the area back behind there [the planned Inland Port location] is number one, noise, and number two is visualization,” Poole said. “What's it going to look like? Is it going to be really bright? How's it gonna sound in the middle of the night? What's the noise for the cranes that are offloading these containers? And really I had the same concerns.”
In order to get a fuller picture of what a completed inland port might look and sound like, Poole and several members of the surrounding community trekked up to Chatsworth, Georgia where the Appalachian Regional Port is in operation. Poole spoke with 30 to 40 community members, port workers and neighbors of the Chatsworth port to get their take.
“I can tell you from the visit up there, the place was immaculate,” Poole said. “It was clean. It was landscaped. It was very neat. The people are very professional … everybody was in agreement that it's been a blessing to their community up there.”
Poole noted that while he sat nearby and watched the operation of the port, it was difficult to hear any loud sounds caused by the cranes or crates being moved. “You can only hear cars going up and down the road,” he said.
One of the major bonuses of bringing an inland port to Hall County is the lessening of truck traffic on the main highways running through the county, according to Poole.
Poole lauded the efforts by the county staff in making sure the neighborhoods surrounding the port have proper access when trains are chugging through the area.
“[The county is] already having trouble with Norfolk Southern blocking the roads,” Poole said. “We don't trust Norfolk Southern, I'm on record saying that … we're looking at connectivity for them. And we're also looking at trying to get a bridge over the railroad tracks there so that people out of Surf Side won't have to go north to Lula to come back south to Gainesville.”
There is currently no official date on record for a ribbon cutting or groundbreaking regarding the Hall County Inland Port. However, Poole noted they are shooting for an end-of-July, early August date to start clearing procedures on the property.
