Lori Baer completes the circle
The Port of Palm Beach director has followed an interesting career course
When Lori Baer is not overseeing activities at the Port of Palm Beach, she likes to drive her classic 1987 Porsche in autocross competitions sponsored by the Porsche Club of America.
Unlike traditional auto racing, in which the drivers blast around a track at top speed, autocross competitors negotiate through a course of pylons set up at venues like the old Hialeah Race Track, focusing on precision car handling skills at speeds that approximate everyday driving conditions. The fastest driver still wins, but the challenge is overcoming the twists and turns on the course.
In some ways, the contests mirror the challenges facing Baer as a port director. Things need to get done as quickly as possible, but the main challenge is handling the unexpected turn of events.
Baer learned that quickly when Hurricane Frances slammed the port her first week as director in the summer of 2004'one of a series of hurricanes she would have to deal with over the next 14 months.
While tempests are not weekly occurrences, the winds of change are blowing through the port, and Baer thinks that is refreshing.
Palm Beach is first and foremost a premier niche port for Caribbean services, and Baer says that will remain a focal point. Palm Beach is the home and primary U.S. port for Tropical Shipping, the single largest carrier in the Caribbean islands trade.
'Sometimes were known as 'Port Tropical,'' Baer says, 'and that's been a good source of recognition for us.'
Yet she is also working to diversify business at the port. Palm Beach is ideal for Tropical, whose vessels are designed with drafts of around 26 feet that are acceptable for the relatively shallow waters of many smaller Caribbean ports. At the same time, Palm Beach has draft limitations itself that will preclude it from wooing the global carriers that are becoming an increasing presence down the coast at Port Everglades and the Port of Miami.
Instead, the Port of Palm Beach is positioning itself to handle more construction materials: cement, rebar and other construction steel, aggregate, and lumber.
Baer said it is significant that the Port of Palm Beach was selected as the port for handling specialty pipe that was barged to Broward County for a natural gas pipeline project. Port Everglades was physically closer to the pipeline, but Baer said officials and Port Everglades actually called and recommended the Port of Palm Beach.
She sees that as one step in a coordinated effort by Florida ports to see themselves'up to a point'as regional maritime gateways. Palm Beach will not be trying to lure the type of carriers that Port Everglades has its eyes on, but it can handle the breakbulk, dry bulk and even commodities like liquid asphalt that will effectively come its way as demand increases and the neighboring ports focus on growing their container business.
'I like to see the breakbulk business,' she said. 'It's labor intensive, provides jobs that help the local economy. I can see us some day becoming a major breakbulk port on the southern Atlantic Coast,' she said, adding, 'Port Manatee has made a nice living off it for years.'
Palm Beach is in the process of getting modest ship channel modifications, hoping to deepen and widen the channel enough to accommodate ships in the 800-foot range, which is what Baer says is needed to satisfy the future demands of the bulk and breakbulk vessels the port hopes to serve.
The port is also in the process of adding new gates for the south end of the port. The project includes the leveling of an old structure and development of new laydown and warehousing space. The new entrance is also being planned to accommodate basically all the port's business besides Tropical Shipping and its container-oriented operations.
There are still some significant questions to be answered in the final stages of the project, presenting the type of challenges that may eventually require the adjusting skills of an autocross driver.
The Metropolitan Planning Organization for Palm Beach County has endorsed a plan to build a new street-level crossing over Florida East Coast Railway tracks near the south end of the port. The crossing is important because it will be part of a key east-west corridor to I-95 and the Florida Turnpike.
The port's first choice would be a crossing that would go over the tracks. Another option, Baer said, would be an underpass. It would not be a tunnel, but a graded crossing that would run under the rail tracks.
The MPO is once again studying the options before making a final recommendation.
There is also an intermodal rail improvement project in the works. Palm Beach has the rare advantage of offering on-port rail service, which is an important element in Tropical's business. Baer said around 20 percent to 25 percent of Tropical's business at the port moves by intermodal rail, and the planned improvements would increase the capacity for that business.
The $12 million improvement would double the existing track where containers are handled. That would not only increase handling capacity, but would help ease the problem of backed up Florida East Coast Railroad trains that regularly block key east-west arterials like Blue Heron Boulevard, the main road for passenger vehicles between I-95 and the port.
Longer term, the port has taken the initial steps toward the development of a proposed 'inland port,' which would be located some 40 miles west of the port in the western part of Palm Beach County.
The basic idea is to allow the port to expand capacity while dealing with a very finite amount of waterfront property. The idea has been used successfully in Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia. There is the basis for a rail corridor between the port and the proposed site, although that rail would need significant improvements.
Of broader statewide interest is an element of the proposal calling for other track additions and improvements that would effectively provide a continuous rail link between the ports of Palm Beach, Port Everglades, and Miami on the Atlantic Coast and Tampa and Port Manatee on the Gulf Coast.
The inland port itself, which would be built on 2,000 to 2,500 acres in an area of the country that is amenable to industrial development, would include distribution centers and warehouses. Similar intermodal facilities have been developed in locations from Alabama to Chicago to Texas.
The proposal, and most notably the intrastate track network, is still at the concept stage, Baer stresses. But the port has nonetheless developed some specific options for track routing. There would be a combination of existing track belonging to CSX Transportation, the Florida East Coast Railway, and the 'sugar railroad' South Central Florida Express, plus some new track that would parallel existing state highways.
The initial plans have been shown to officials from the Florida Department of Transportation, as well as the Florida Transportation Commission and various port stakeholders that would be impacted by the project.
Baer said the proposal could evolve into something that would be more of a regional project, perhaps leading to the creation of a new port-authority-like entity that would include representation from all the ports that would use the network, as well as other state transportation officials.
Baer's liking for interport cooperation and regional port planning would in a sense allow Baer's port career to come full circle.
A South Florida native who went to high school in Fort Lauderdale and then went on to get a basic liberal arts education at Florida State University, Baer landed in the ports industry almost by accident when she accepted what was supposed to be a short-term job as a public information officer at the Port of Miami after graduation. That actually lasted several months, Baer recalled, but led to the next critical stage of her career.
She decided there would be a lot of action and opportunity in Washington, D.C., and moved there with high hopes and no specific job. She answered an ad for a job at what turned out to be the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA), now located in Alexandria, Va. but then located in Washington.
Based on her experience at the Port of Miami, she landed the job at the AAPA. She was involved in new memberships, but the small size of the staff in the 1980s allowed her exposure to a whole range of AAPA service and activities.
'It was a totally fortuitous set of circumstances,' Baer observed.
She stayed at the AAPA for five years, but started to feel the tug of Florida. By then with extensive exposure to the entire U.S. ports industry, Baer was seasoned enough to land a job back home as the communications director at the Port of Miami, where she worked for 12 years.
But she further broadened her experience in the industry when she left the Port of Miami and got into the port consulting industry. She worked for the well-known firms CH2M Hill and then Gee & Jensen (which has since been acquired by CH2M Hill) and was involved in a series of port expansion studies, as well as regional port studies, all of which gave her an inside look at a wide range of port development projects.
She was briefly lured back to the AAPA as communications director in November of 2002. But she was actually commuting between Florida and Washington, a challenge familiar to many Washington workers from around the country, when she was contacted by Richard Wainio, the director of the Port of Palm Beach, in the spring of 2003.
Wainio hired Baer as deputy director, and is now the director of the Port of Tampa. Baer became the port director in 2004, and has been successfully covering the sometimes twisting course since then.
Although she has come up through the ranks from a communications background as opposed to being an engineer or financial officer, Baer notes that port directors around the country now come from a wide variety of backgrounds.
She believes her hiring after serving as deputy director has allowed the port to maintain a sense of continuity, and she is eager about the prospects for the future.
'I think we're well positioned to maintain our position as a container port for the Caribbean,' she said, 'and at the same time seize the opportunities we have to develop as a breakbulk and bulk port.'