Port

Delaware Avenue ports were abuzz yesterday as USDA Inspector Jonnie Tigner (above) examines first shipment of Chilean fruit of the season, a $1.5 billion industry, at Tioga Fruit Terminal. Bill Molz (left) checks inventory at new 208,000-square-foot warehouse for forest products at Snyder Avenue.

City officials are hoping their plan to create an enterprise zone along the Delaware River waterfront will help capture state subsidies needed to rebuild Philadelphia's port facilities. The city Commerce Department wants to nominate a large stretch of riverfront property for consideration as an enterprise zone - a designation that would allow the area to better compete for low-interest loans and grants. The area that the city has in mind includes the Tioga and Packer Avenue marine terminals, and all the waterfront property in between.

Next time you peel a banana, there's an excellent chance it will have slipped here through a port on the Delaware River. Billions of bananas arrive through the piers and terminals on the Delaware headed to grocers, wholesalers, and produce markets across the country. Wilmington is the largest banana port in North America, and is second only to Antwerp, Belgium, in banana cargoes in the world. Dole Fresh Fruit Co. brings one ship a week, carrying more than 65 million bananas into the Christina River in Wilmington, or more than three billion bananas a year, said Dole vice president for operations Stuart Jablon.

Dole Fresh Fruit Co. has renewed its lease until 2025 with the Diamond State Port Corp. at the Port of Wilmington, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell announced Friday. The long-term contract "secures more than 800 jobs at the port," he said. Financial terms were not disclosed. Wilmington is the largest banana-receiving port in the world. In 2009, Dole made 57 ship calls in Wilmington. Dole is the largest banana company in North America and brings in more than 60 million individual bananas and over 1 million individual pineapples a week into Wilmington, said Stuart Jablon, Dole's vice president of operations in Wilmington.

While the maritime community has been lobbying hard for Conrail to develop an intermodal yard near the port, CSX has been working quietly on such a facility in South Philadelphia. Within the next two months, the parent company of the Chessie system will complete a $2.3 million renovation of its 60-acre yard at Snyder and Delaware avenues that will boost its capacity to transfer marine cargo containers to rail flatcars. "It's a great step forward for the port," said Bill DeWitt, the Philadelphia Port Corp.

Frances H. Sherman, 65, who was one of the first women to become a business leader at the Ports of Philadelphia and became something of an institution in Delaware River business circles, died Sunday in the Fox Chase Cancer Center. Ms. Sherman had worked for 43 years at Davies, Turner & Co., a customs brokerage and foreign freight forwarding firm, where she was secretary- treasurer and managed the Philadelphia office for more than half of her career. Ms. Sherman became known within the port for her knowledge of customs regulations.

Stung by a state ethics commission conflict-of-interest ruling, John Ober resigned yesterday as vice chairman of the South Jersey Port Corp. Ober came under scrutiny by New Jersey's Executive Commission on Ethical Standards because of private business dealings with the state-owned port agency's municipal dock at Salem. He is one of three partners in the Del Line, a one-year-old steamship company that uses the Port of Salem dock. Though it acknowledged that Ober quit voting on Salem matters when Del Line began using Salem last July, the commission ruled that he had continued to participate in discussions and receive confidential information related to Salem.

Port of call: Penn's Landing, where the SS Meridian stopped yesterday. Non- cruisers also got some sun.

Moscow Circus' U.S. tour ends today at Camden's South Jersey Port Corp., where Baltic Shipping Line's freighter Ulan Bator is taking on animals, tents and all. Port chief Joseph A. Balzano cited plans to increase capacity and serve as a North Atlantic hub for the line.

A longtime dockworker died in a Camden port accident early yesterday. Crane operator Krzystof A. Zarotynski, 57, was standing on a dock at the Beckett Street Terminal about 6 a.m. when the accident occurred, Joseph Balzano, executive director of the South Jersey Port Corp., said in a statement. Zarotynski was standing below the crane, said Jay Jones, deputy executive director of the Port Corp. It was a routine day, and crews were readying the crane with a container spreader, a device that allows them to unload 20- and 40-foot containers from ships.

In a game-changing move for both the Port of Wilmington and the state of Delaware, officials are pursuing a partnership with a private company or investment group to operate the publicly owned terminal and to expand the port by constructing ship berths on the Delaware River that could cost as much as $500 million. The state-owned Wilmington port touts itself as the largest handler of imported perishable cargo, fruits and vegetables in the United States and as the largest banana port in North America, second only to Antwerp, Belgium, in volume of bananas in the world.

RUSH-HOUR TRAFFIC on Aramingo Avenue came to a crawl in Port Richmond Wednesday as drivers paused to watch police place yellow evidence markers on a Jiffy Lube driveway where bullet casings landed after a shooting that left a 40-year-old employee dead. The unidentified victim was moving a Ford Focus into the service bay at the shop on Aramingo Avenue near Venango about 5:30 p.m. when a man approached him and the two got into a heated argument, police said. Chief Inspector Scott Small said the gunman fired at least six shots at the victim and fled the scene on foot.

After Sunoco Inc. sold its Frankford chemical plant to Honeywell International Inc. last year and cut back shipments of key raw materials, Honeywell lined up alternative suppliers in the Gulf of Mexico to bring thousands of tons of a critical industrial chemical for making nylon into the Tioga Marine Terminal in Port Richmond. That has meant a big gain for the Philadelphia port — an additional 300,000 to 400,000 tons of liquid bulk cargo bound for the Honeywell plant will arrive this year, bringing the total of such cargo to "well over one million tons," said Robert Blackburn, the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority's senior deputy executive director.

A former Port Richmond pastor is among the Catholic priests who will be permanently removed from ministry over child-sex abuse allegations, according to a lawyer for a man who said the cleric raped him. Archdiocese of Philadelphia officials notified the accuser on Thursday that Msgr. Francis J. Feret won't be reinstated, attorney Daniel Monahan said. Feret, 75, spent more than a decade as pastor of St. Adalbert in the city's Port Richmond section, and twice as long as a teacher and administrator at Cardinal Dougherty High School.

REGINA M. Donnelly, a kindhearted and caring woman who delighted in lavishing gifts upon her scores of nieces and nephews, died Sunday of natural causes. The Port Richmond native was 88. "She was everybody's Aunt Jeannie, even if you weren't related by blood or marriage," said a niece, Mary Lee Dougherty. "Aunt Jeannie made everybody she liked a niece or nephew. " And she liked most everybody she met. "A nice guy was called an 'Ace.' A nice gal was called a 'Doll.' She liked her Aces to be sharp dressers, and her Dolls smartly attired," said Dougherty.

A Port Richmond man found guilty of helping bartender John McLaughlin try to dispose of a body and then elude authorities was sentenced Friday to 11 1/2 to 23 months in prison by a Philadelphia judge. Before he was sentenced, Samuel E. Toy, 48, turned to the family and friends of victim Seamus O'Neill to "offer my deepest sympathy. . . . You are in my prayers. " Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart sentenced Toy to the prison term followed by two years of probation but allowed Toy to be immediately paroled as an inpatient to an alcohol treatment facility for evaluation of a drinking problem and the role it may have played in his conduct.

When a port with two ship berths opens late next year in Paulsboro, it will be the first new marine terminal in 50 years on the Delaware. Already, about $70 million has been spent to clear the site, construct a retaining wall on the shoreline, and haul and place 300,000 cubic yards of soil to raise the elevation of the 190-acre site, directly across from Philadelphia International Airport. The port is at a bend in the river, and thousands of cubic yards of sediment have been dredged to deepen the area to 40 feet to accommodate ships.

SANDAKAN, Malaysia - Smiling passengers voiced relief and gratitude after safely leaving a fire-damaged luxury cruise ship that was stranded at sea for 24 hours and limped without air-conditioning into a Malaysian port Sunday. The Azamara Quest drifted off the southern Philippines with 1,000 people aboard after flames engulfed one of its engine rooms Friday, injuring five crew members. It restored propulsion the next night and reached the harbor of Sandakan city in Malaysia's eastern state of Sabah on Borneo island late Sunday.

NEW YORK - The agency that owns the World Trade Center, New York City's airports, and several bridges and tunnels will scale back benefits for its nonunion employees in a move expected to save $41 million over 18 months. The governing board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey approved the cuts Thursday in response to an audit of the agency released last month. It also approved a reorganization of the authority's police force. The audit ordered by the governors of New York and New Jersey had criticized the agency's organization and called its management "dysfunctional.

The Delaware River Port Authority has wasted millions of dollars of toll payers' money through mismanagement and political cronyism, the New Jersey state comptroller said in a report issued Thursday. Comptroller Matthew Boxer chastised the DRPA for practices such as its much-criticized "economic development" spending and its now-ended free E-ZPass benefits for DRPA executives and their families and friends. Boxer also exposed an insurance payback deal allegedly orchestrated by George E. Norcross III, the South Jersey insurance executive and Democratic Party power broker who is chairman of the board of Cooper University Hospital in Camden.