Transportation network and the economic expansion
With a population of just 143,000, Savannah trails only New York City as an East Coast container port and ranks No. 4 nationally after Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, according to Datamyne data compiled by Bloomberg.
“Not only have we been the fastest-growing port in the U.S. for a decade now,” Curtis Foltz, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, said at the organization’s annual meeting in September. “But we’re now in a position to grow and become No. 1. Something that was unfathomable a decade ago is something that is at least within our sight.”
The city best known for its haunted-house tours and moss-draped trees has been the fastest-growing major U.S. harbor for most of the last decade with an average annual growth rate of 11 percent. Once a sleepy outpost for timber and white-clay exports, Savannah has leapfrogged Baltimore, Miami, Charleston, Norfolk and Philadelphia thanks to its transportation network and the economic expansion in the U.S. and southeast region.
“This is the fastest-growing demographic area in the country, and it will be the fastest-growing demographic area in the country for the next half century,” Foltz said. “We are the leading port serving the Southeast.”
The U.S economy has grown by an average of 2.2 percent annually since the recession ended in 2009. By comparison, the gross domestic product of more than half the states that comprise the 13-state Southeast region have been growing at a faster rate, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.