A privately owned marine terminal five miles downstream from Savannah's River Street is set to break ground in 2027, bringing a 3,000-foot ship berth and years of sea wall work to a stretch of riverfront that has already drawn objections from the region's biggest port operator. The SeaPoint Industrial Marine Terminal sits on 755 acres along the Savannah River, positioned closer to the Atlantic Ocean than the facilities run by the Georgia Ports Authority and other cargo handlers nearby.
Construction is scheduled to begin next year, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which reports the terminal will include a 3,000-foot-long berth long enough for multiple vessels to dock for loading and unloading at once. The project is owned by Savannah industrialist Reed Dulany, who has spent much of the past three years building a sea wall to make that berth possible, the newspaper reports.
A Sea Wall Years in the Making
That sea wall work hit a snag along the way: it was temporarily delayed by objections raised by the Georgia Ports Authority, per the same AJC report. The friction reflects a broader tension on what the newspaper describes as a crowded working riverfront, where a private terminal and the region's dominant public port authority are jockeying for space and influence just miles apart.
A contractor announcement detailed more of what's coming. According to the American Journal of Transportation, construction firm Michels has been awarded a progressive design-build contract for the SeaPoint Industrial Terminal Complex, with the finished terminal described as a 226-acre, fully private, multiuse facility within the larger 755-acre complex. That same announcement put the planned berth at 3,000 feet with a channel depth of 47 feet.
From Contaminated Site to Economic Pitch
The ground beneath SeaPoint has its own backstory. The Current reported that Georgia regulators removed the Chatham County site from the state's Hazardous Site Inventory List in March 2025 after remediation work, clearing a legal cloud that had hung over the property. The same outlet cited a University of Georgia study estimating the site could eventually support more than 1,700 high-wage jobs and generate nearly $1 billion in annual economic impact, a projection developers have leaned on to sell the project's upside. The Current's reporting also placed the complex precisely: 755 acres on the river's southern bank, between Old Fort Jackson and the Elba Island LNG facility.
Traffic Fears From the Region's Biggest Port
Not everyone has welcomed SeaPoint with open arms. WJCL reported that the Georgia Ports Authority said it had fully vetted the idea of using SeaPoint as a container terminal itself, then stepped away after a due-diligence process of traffic studies raised red flags. The authority estimated the project could add 4,000 to 10,000 more trucks to local roads, warning that volumes at that scale would bring Derenne Avenue, President Street, Abercorn Street and Bay Street to practically a standstill, according to the same report.
SeaPoint's ownership group has pushed back with an alternative vision for moving goods. Per WJCL, the property owners have proposed taking products brought through the terminal and loading them onto electric-driven barges to move them farther upriver rather than sending everything out by truck. Whether that approach would satisfy the ports authority's traffic concerns remains an open question between the two sides.
A Second Terminal Rising Nearby
SeaPoint isn't the only major port expansion moving forward on the Savannah River. The AJC also reported that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved a permit for the Georgia Ports Authority's planned $2.3 billion Savannah Container Terminal after a three-year review, with construction on that separate, publicly backed project expected to begin in January 2028. That terminal, Savannah's third, is projected to add three ship berths and lift the port's annual container capacity from 7.75 million TEUs to more than 12 million TEUs once it's finished in the mid-2030s, the outlet reported.
The growth pressure behind both projects isn't new. Savannah Morning News reported that container volume at Georgia Ports Authority facilities increased more than 200% between 2006 and 2020, a surge that has reshaped how much cargo — and how many trucks — move through the region each year. With SeaPoint's private berth now a year from breaking ground and the Ports Authority's own terminal queued up just behind it, the stretch of river south of downtown Savannah is set to look very different by the time both projects are finished.
