Loop Track Terminal Construction Project Groundbreaking
On March 19, 2021, the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority (Semo Port) held a groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the new Loop Track Terminal (LTT) at Semo Port. Semo Port was awarded a Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD)
Grant by Maritime Administration (MARAD) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) in December of 2018 and signed the grant agreement in September of 2020. The total project budget is $33,000,000 with 60% being provided by the MARAD BUILD Grant and the remaining 40% being provided by Semo Port and partially locally financed by First State Community Bank.
The Loop Track Terminal (LTT) will be a new state-of-the-art, highly efficient rail-barge terminal consisting of railroad loop tracks for the accommodation of unit freight rail trains, a rail-to-barge conveyor system for rapid unloading and product transfer, and a river barge load out terminal. The LTT Project will provide the capability for efficient multimodal transfer of multiple products between unit trains and river barges. As a public terminal in a rural area, it will serve multiple freight shippers and receivers.
The first phase of the project construction for earthwork has been awarded to Fronabarger Concreters, Inc. from Oak Ridge, MO. It is expected that within the next two to three months that the railroad track portion of the project will be advertised and bid awarded. The remaining two portions of the project, a street extension and a material handling facility to transload from rail to
barge will follow later this year. The project is expected to take three to four years to fully construct all portions of the project.
The loop track project idea started early in Mr. Overbey’s 25-year term as Executive Director for Semo Port as he thought about what the Port needed in the future to compete and to be successful. Mr. Harbison started working on parts of the loop track project in the early 2000’s while employed as a civil engineer with Bowen Engineering & Surveying located in Cape Girardeau. Together they have been working on the culmination of this project for well over 40 years. Semo Port is very excited to finally see the project underway after such a long road.
