Federal, state and local officials celebrate $28M dock restoration in Superior

State and local officials celebrated the grand opening of a roughly $28 million dock restoration in Superior on Wednesday, with the project allowing commercial shipping operations to return to a site that had been idle for three decades.

The rehabilitation effort allowed C. Reiss Co. to relocate its shipping operations from Duluth. Founded in Wisconsin in 1880, the company handles about 2 million tons of bulk materials like coal, limestone and salt each year.

The project received about $15 million in state and federal grants for the state-of-the-art bulk handling and transloading facility, according to Christian Zuidmulder, president of C. Reiss. The funds included about $8.4 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration. A former coal dock, the site had not been in use for 30 years.

“With this new state-of-the-art terminal, we are now positioned to continue to grow this operation, allowing for larger ships and more cargo into the port and onto the rails to our customers across the upper Midwest,” Zuidmulder said.

Zuidmulder said the new dock terminal will improve safety, reliability and efficiency of freight movement. The company could also double its capacity to each year handle about 1 million tons of limestone, salt and other materials, making it the largest of its five terminals.

Work at the roughly 50-acre site included restoration of 2,500 feet of dock wall, 87,225 feet of railroad track, a maintenance building, a salt-storage pad, a stormwater management pond, road work and dredging of more than 48,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment. 

EPA Regional Administrator Anne Vogel said the agency provided about $2 million under the Great Lakes Legacy Act to clean up the site.

“What needs to happen before you can have development like this is for that contamination to be removed,” Vogel said. “Whether that’s dredging and removal, landfilling, whatever needs to happen, our program office comes up with that plan and helps to fund that work.”

Cuts to EPA funding under the Trump administration has drawn concerns about funding for similar restoration projects under the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Vogel said the program has drawn bipartisan support from lawmakers and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who recently said its funding will continue.

Jason Serck, the planning, port and economic development director in Superior, said efforts to restore the dock aimed to keep jobs and business in the Twin Ports.

“We want to make sure that we kind of retain those properties at our waterfront for waterfront uses,” Serck said. “You can have recreation and that sort of thing, but when you have facilities that are ripe and on the channel, I think it’s really prudent to be smart about preserving those for shipping.”

The port of Duluth-Superior handles the most cargo of any port on the Great Lakes by tonnage, moving up to 35 million tons each year. Gov. Tony Evers said his administration provided $3 million in funding for the project through the Wisconsin Harbor Assistance Program.

“Now, this newly refurbished dock will help ease the process of transferring and transporting millions of dollars of products each year through this port,” Evers said. “This benefits our state and advances economic opportunities throughout the Great Lakes region.”

Since 2019, Evers said the state has invested $84 million in Wisconsin ports like Superior. The city has received $26 million from the program since 1981 to leverage about $50 million in improvements across seven port terminals, according to Lindsey Graskey, president of the Superior City Council. 

“The Port of Duluth-Superior is an engine for our entire region,” Graskey said.

A 2023 industry-funded report by consulting firm Martin Associates found marine terminals in Duluth-Superior support more than 7,100 jobs and generated about $1.6 billion in economic activity.

The company currently has five employees in Duluth-Superior and hopes to add more jobs with added capacity at the dock, which handled its first shipment in November last year.

C. Reiss Coal Co. operates terminals in Superior, Green Bay and Escanaba.