On Wednesday (6/8/11), I toured Zidell Marine Corporation on a Port of Portland tour (one of a series I’ve been attending). Zidell (here) sits on thirty-six acres on the west side of and below the Ross Island bridge. They are increasingly a holdover manufacturing operation in the twenty-first century residential landscape of Portland’s South Waterfront. Zidell sits right next to the base station for the gondola that goes to the Oregon Health Sciences University.
Zidell makes barges. Some it sells as ordered, some it leases, usually for ten years or so. It makes a variety of types of barges. They make them largely one at a time. The one under construction as we visited was an oil barge, complete with a heating system to keep the oil fluid at about 100 degrees. It takes about fourteen months to make such a barge that costs $13-15 million. I saw the double hull construction now required.
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