Port Cities Prep for Wider Panama Canal
Thursday, July 17th, 2014
The Port of Houston is sizzling, and not just because it is summer in Texas.
Houston leads all but three U.S. metropolitan areas in the construction of industrial space, with more than 4.7 million square feet under way. And the rent for industrial properties rose faster there than in any other market in the year through March.
Brokers credit Texas's rapidly expanding oil-and-natural-gas sector for rising demand for space at the ports. But a less-obvious factor also is responsible: the widening of the Panama Canal.
When Panama in 2006 approved plans to modernize its 100-year-old canal to allow for bigger ships carrying 2.5 times as much container cargo, it threatened to break the West Coast's hold on trade with Northeast Asia.
