On a former Navy base in North Charleston, six electric cranes stand assembled over a 118-acre rail yard that has yet to load a train.

The Navy Base Intermodal Facility was supposed to open in July 2025. More than a year later, the South Carolina State Ports Authority, known as SC Ports, has not set an opening date. SC Ports’ own monthly cargo report includes a line for the yard. It shows no rail moves there through September.

What the authority needs first are signed operating agreements with CSX and Norfolk Southern, the two freight railroads that would serve it.

“We have made a ton of progress,” President and CEO Micah Mallace told The Post and Courier in August. “We now need to memorialize all that progress into actual operating agreements.”

He said the primary business terms were understood. Once the deals are signed, construction can resume, Mallace said, but he declined to give a restart or completion date, according to the newspaper.

What the yard is for

The yard is designed to move containers between trains and trucks a short drive from the port’s terminals. When finished, it will have 35,000 feet of processing track, six electric rail-mounted gantry cranes and capacity for 1 million rail lifts a year, according to SC Ports.

The authority has said it is the only major East Coast port operator that cannot offer on-dock or near-dock rail service, the Post and Courier reported.

About 25% of the port’s containers move by rail today. To get them there, the authority spends about $39 million a year on its Rapid Rail program, which trucks containers from its terminals to railroad yards in North Charleston, the SC Daily Gazette reported in February.

Over budget and behind schedule

Palmetto Railways, the state-owned short-line railroad, began planning the yard more than 15 years ago. SC Ports took it over in 2021, when lawmakers provided $400 million, according to the Post and Courier.

In a February progress report to legislators, the authority said it had committed $485 million to the yard and paid $380.3 million to vendors, the Gazette reported. It also said all six cranes had been assembled and that a private road linking the yard to Leatherman Terminal should be finished by late 2026.

The authority has promised not to ask taxpayers for more money, but the February update said that promise “may require certain considerations,” according to the Gazette.

When the July 2025 deadline slipped, the authority planned to open part of the yard in January 2026. Mallace dropped that plan days after he took over in October 2025, saying the authority would wait until the whole project was done.

Rushing to meet a January date “just didn’t make sense to us,” he said then, according to the Post and Courier.

The most critical unfinished piece is a new loop of track at the south end that would let Norfolk Southern trains in and out, the newspaper reported. Without it, CSX would be the only carrier, using an existing line to the north. Norfolk Southern has said it would not use the yard unless the authority also spent $27 million on unrelated rail improvements benefiting the railroad, the Gazette reported.

A railroad hand for the job

In August, SC Ports’ board hired Palmetto Railways CEO Patrick McCrory as chief operating officer. He started Oct. 5.

Mallace said the yard “dramatically increases the complexity of our rail-related work,” according to the Post and Courier. “And having someone with deep rail experience we felt was integral to delivering this facility and turning it around successfully,” he said.

Palmetto Railways, meanwhile, put three lots it bought for the project in 2010 and 2013 up for sale this summer, the Post and Courier reported. McCrory said in a statement that the land, about 6 acres, was no longer needed for rail operations at the yard. Bids were due Aug. 5.

The yard’s future is also tied to Leatherman Terminal next door, which SC Ports idled Aug. 1 because of low volume and high costs.

A promise kept

One part of the project is finished. The Michael Brown Community Wellness Center, at 2920 Carner Ave., opened with a ribbon cutting Feb. 26, according to the city’s recreation department.

SC Ports paid for and built the $6.8 million center under a community mitigation agreement for the rail yard, according to the city and the Post and Courier. The agreement was negotiated by the Chicora-Cherokee Neighborhood Association, the Union Heights Community Council, the Lowcountry Alliance for Model Communities and the Metanoia Community Development Corporation, the city said.

The center replaces Sterrett Hall, a gymnasium and auditorium on Reynolds Avenue that was torn down for the rail yard about a decade ago, the Post and Courier reported. Plans to replace it date to 2016.

The building has a full gymnasium, a fitness room and meeting space. Ownership passed from SC Ports to the city, whose recreation department runs it.

“The Port made a promise and they kept their promise,” Skip Mikell, president of the Union Heights Community Council, told the Post and Courier.

City Councilman Michael Brown represents the area.

“When you think about it, there was nothing there before,” Brown told the newspaper.