Chad Meyer, president and founding partner of NorthPoint Development

Officials and developers for decades have talked about expanding the Port of Coos Bay in Southern Oregon, turning it into one of the West Coast’s shipping giants.

Now, the proposed project has a major developer-investor behind it.

The developer is a Missouri-based firm called NorthPoint Development, which Real Capital Analytics in 2020 named the No. 1 industrial developer in the U.S. The company has developed more than 140 million square feet of industrial space for about 465 businesses, including Fortune 500 companies such as Walmart, Amazon and FedEx.

Last week at the Agriculture Transportation Coalition’s conference in Tacoma, NorthPoint Development unveiled its plans for Coos Bay.

The plan is to develop a rail-served, deep-water port with a three-berth terminal. A berth is where vessels are secured when they’re not at sea.

Once constructed, the facility could serve agricultural exporters nationwide and move more than 1 million 40-foot containers annually.

Chad Meyer, president and founding partner of NorthPoint, said he believes the port expansion will help relieve congestion and meet future shipping demand.

“What we’re going to do is be a pressure release valve,” said Meyer.

Meyer said NorthPoint has been working behind the scenes for months to scope out the ideal location for a West Coast port.

“We’ve made a pretty massive investment in our research and data team,” said Meyer. “So, quietly, for about a year and a half, we studied the entire West Coast…and figured that the only option that could geographically handle a deep-water port was already in existence, and that was the Port of Coos Bay.”

The site is ideal for several reasons, he said. The location already has a federally-managed channel, a private rail line that could connect to Class I railroads, hundreds of acres of undeveloped industrial property — “and most importantly, a willing community.”

The plan would likely include building cold storage facilities and connecting the Port of Coos Bay’s private rail line to Union Pacific Co.’s Class I railroads in Eugene and elsewhere. Meyer said Union Pacific so far has been “a very willing partner and very supportive of the project.”

Meyer estimates construction will begin in two years and facilities will be operational within five to six years.

In total, developing the port is estimated to cost $1.7 billion. Meyer said he anticipates the project will need private investment coupled with federal grant money, potentially from the infrastructure law Congress passed in 2021.

During President Biden’s visit to Portland in April, U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio asked the president to use infrastructure dollars for Coos Bay’s port expansion. The president made no immediate promises.

NorthPoint says it’s committed to the project.

“This is a when, not an if. We’re privately going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in making sure this thing happens,” said Meyer, of NorthPoint.

Experts say unexpected world events could still slow the project.

Prior to 2008, according to John Burns, the port’s CEO, Maersk, then the world’s largest shipping company, was preparing to invest in a Coos Bay container port. Then the Great Recession struck and the company withdrew.

Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal this month predicted a 44% chance of recession in the next 12 months.

However, the port’s staff and Meyer of NorthPoint say they’re optimistic.

Agricultural exporters are watching with interest.

“That’s incredibly exciting,” said Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition. “I mean, we’re looking for alternative solutions. We’re doing some nibbling around the edges and maybe moving some boxes off terminals to another place a mile away or something like that, but this — this is visionary, I would say, and ambitious.”