This is a repost of a 2006 report. The stiff leg derrick is still in place today. Large and heavy steel and equipment is still being made overseas - and not in NEO. Think about it: the Port is a JOB LOSER because just about nothing is exported!
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Cleveland’s Port Authority is missing the boat. This way-obsolete stiff leg derrick is a symbol of how off-message they are... AWOL in responsibly serving the charge their name implies.
The derrick crane is an embarrassment to Cleveland it is so old – definitely pre WWII. No wonder the Port Authority now specializes in providing financial bond back up for construction of Cleveland Clinic parking garages and Cleveland Heights private school expansion and threatening eminent domain for local well heeled developers and filling parkland with industrial size gravel piles. The ship loading/unloading equipment which the Port offers is out of the dark ages. The Port of Cleveland is Sleepy Hollow.
Maybe it is a good thing to preserve the antique crane because without modern hydraulic intermodal container and dockside heavy lift cranes, it is impossible for Ohio companies to offshore construction of large weldments any bigger than the tanks in this photo. The tanks are consigned to Linde gasses company in Lima, Ohio. The tanks could have been made in Ohio, but they were cheaper elsewhere. So Linde imported them through the Port of Cleveland.
If the Cleveland Port Authority financed more modern dockage and loading facilities instead of parking garages, surely more heavy goods would be imported and offloaded in Ohio. Big welded structures like 70 + ton wind turbine towers could be unloaded and shipped throughout Ohio. By maintaining this antique crane, the Port Authority is preventing the invasion of Ohio by these big foreign goods and in so doing helping keep the balance of payments to outside the US in check.
Seriously, why has the Cleveland Port Authority abrogated its charge? Who appoints the Authority’s board members. Why are they meddling in threatening eminent domain for Wolstein rather than bringing their own house into modernity?
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