A $1.2 Billion Phase 1 Bet on the Mississippi

A Louisiana developer advances a landmark financing plan for what could become the Gulf Coast’s most consequential new port — and now moves toward a financial close that would put shovels in the ground.

By Jonas Laskauskas   ·   Staff Reporter, RNO   ·   Q2 2026

On a wide bend of the lower Mississippi River, thirty miles south of New Orleans and fifty miles from the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Christopher Fetters can see the future of American freight. Standing amid a thousand acres in Plaquemines Parish, the licensed engineer and developer gestures across a flat expanse of marsh grass and compacted earth toward the river’s dark, fast-moving current. Here, he says, will be the first of three deep-draft container berths capable of receiving the largest ships in the world — no bridge overhead, no turning basin required, nothing between an incoming post-Panamax vessel and the open sea but fifty feet of federally authorized channel depth and the raw geography of the Mississippi Delta.

“The river does something here that it doesn’t do anywhere else in the system,” Fetters said on a recent morning. “It’s wide enough, deep enough, and free enough that you don’t need any of the infrastructure constraints that limit every other port on the Gulf. You just need the will to build.”

That will now has a price tag — and a financing plan to match.

Louisiana 23 Development Company, the private developer behind what it is calling Louisiana’s Gateway Terminal, or LGT, is advancing a Phase 1 financing plan targeting approximately $1.2 billion in total capitalization — comprising up to approximately $300 million in equity and approximately $900 million in construction and term debt, structured at approximately 6 percent interest with an 80 percent loan-to-value ratio. The financing program represents one of the most consequential new-build Gulf Coast port capitalization efforts in more than a decade, and marks a decisive milestone for a development that has spent years navigating the regulatory and financing labyrinth that surrounds major American port construction.

“This is not a speculative project. Serious, rigorous capital has looked at this site, this team, and this market and concluded that the fundamentals are real.”

— Infrastructure finance analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity

For Fetters and his team, reaching this stage of the financing process reflects years of engineering, regulatory, and commercial groundwork laid well before institutional capital markets were engaged.

“When you have advanced a project to this stage — with thirty percent design complete, a contractor selected, an operator LOI executed, and permits progressing — you are no longer in the conversation about whether this gets built,” said Fetters, who founded Louisiana 23 Development Company after more than two decades in infrastructure engineering, including leading the North American ports and harbors practice at the global engineering firm GHD and directing port strategy for GIS Engineering. “You are in the conversation about when, and how fast.”

A DECADE IN THE MAKING

The Plaquemines Port Harbor and Terminal District was established by the Louisiana Legislature in 1954, but the lower river’s potential as a deep-draft container terminal location remained largely unrealized for generations. The port’s 2010 Master Plan — developed in part by the same planning and engineering advisors who would later join the LGT effort — identified the specific site now controlled by Louisiana 23 as the preferred location for a major new container terminal. That report cited the site’s unique combination of channel depth, river geometry, land availability, and proximity to the Gulf as making it categorically superior to any other lower-Mississippi option.

Fetters, who established Louisiana 23 Development Company and began working with the port district in 2014, spent the better part of the subsequent decade assembling the pieces: land control across a thousand private acres, early-stage engineering and environmental work, engagement with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the Section 404 and 408 permit processes, recruitment of a world-class technical team, and the cultivation of relationships with potential terminal operators and beneficial cargo owners.

The project’s earliest financial support came from a small group of seed capital investors — three individuals and companies whose early commitments of capital and resources kept the development alive through years of permitting, design, and regulatory engagement when institutional money was not yet available.

THE FINANCING PLAN

In the world of infrastructure project finance, a well-structured financing program performs a function that goes well beyond simple capitalization. It serves as a signal — to equity markets, to contractors, to terminal operators, and to the regulatory agencies whose final approvals the project still requires — that independent, rigorous analysis has been conducted and found the project’s fundamentals to be sound.

The approximately $900 million in targeted construction and term debt represents the debt component of a total $1.2 billion Phase 1 program. The debt is contemplated as a construction-to-term facility: funding would draw down alongside construction milestones and convert to a term loan upon completion of Phase 1 — a structure designed to eliminate the refinancing risk that has derailed similar projects in the past. The approximately 6 percent interest rate reflects the project team’s assessment of the terminal as investment-grade infrastructure risk: well-collateralized, with clearly defined cash flows tied to a terminal operator Letter of Intent already executed and throughput projections supported by independent market analysis.

“The lower Mississippi has been waiting for this for thirty years. The river geography is extraordinary. The question was always whether someone would have the patience and the capital to unlock it.”

— Angelito Salcedo, Jr., Advisor to Searaven

Industry observers note that the financing terms reflect a broader shift in infrastructure lending that has accelerated since 2022: institutional lenders, flush with capital but increasingly wary of equity-market volatility, have moved aggressively toward construction lending on privately held, long-duration assets in sectors that benefit from structural economic tailwinds. Gulf Coast port infrastructure, with its exposure to post-Panamax vessel traffic growth, domestic re-shoring investment, and supply-chain diversification away from West Coast port concentration, has emerged as one of the most attractive lending verticals in the infrastructure debt market.

“A new container terminal on the lower Mississippi with this site quality and regulatory progress is a serious proposition,” said one infrastructure finance analyst who reviewed public materials related to the LGT project but declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak about client matters. “When independent capital looks at the geotechnical reports, the permit record, the market analysis, and the operator engagement and concludes that the risk profile is institutional — that changes the narrative completely.”

The financing plan is being advanced toward financial close, at which point final authorizations and the Guaranteed Maximum Price from the contractor would be executed. The project team has indicated that detailed design and financing are advancing in parallel.

THE EQUITY STRATEGY

With the financing plan in advanced development, the primary near-term objective is the completion of the equity capital stack — targeted at up to approximately $300 million — which, combined with the approximately $900 million in construction and term debt, would bring the total Phase 1 capital to approximately $1.2 billion.

Louisiana 23 is engaged in active discussions with a range of institutional infrastructure investors, which sources familiar with the process say includes large sovereign wealth funds, pension fund infrastructure allocators, and dedicated infrastructure equity managers — the same category of capital that has backed comparable terminal projects at Houston, Savannah, and the Port of Virginia over the past decade.

“When you walk into a room and can demonstrate thirty percent design, a contractor selected, an operator LOI executed, and permits advancing through the federal process, the nature of the discussion changes immediately,” Fetters said. “You are not selling a vision. You are presenting a capital allocation opportunity in a project that has already been through significant technical and commercial validation.”

“You are not selling a vision. You are presenting a capital allocation opportunity in a project that has already been through significant technical and commercial validation.”

— Christopher Fetters, CEO, Louisiana 23 Development Company

The equity raise is proceeding against a backdrop of intense global competition for Gulf Coast container capacity. The Panama Canal expansion of 2016 effectively redrew the map of American freight logistics: where once the West Coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach processed the vast majority of trans-Pacific container imports, the expanded canal — capable of handling vessels of up to 14,600 TEUs — has steadily shifted cargo toward East and Gulf Coast ports. Today, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers data, 64 percent of American import volume by container is processed at ports east of the continental divide, up from 46 percent before the canal expansion.

LGT is designed to capture a material share of that growth. The terminal’s 50-foot authorized channel depth and the natural geometry of the lower Mississippi, which is wide enough at the project site to allow post-Panamax vessels to maneuver without a constructed turning basin, make it one of the very few locations on the Gulf Coast capable of accommodating the largest vessels in the global fleet without modification. The site’s position on the west bank of the river — avoiding the bridge clearance constraints that limit container growth at the Port of New Orleans — is a further structural advantage.

“The case for why a new Gulf container terminal gets built here, and not somewhere else, is essentially geographical,” said Robert Crewe, a principal with Searaven. “You cannot replicate this site. The river depth, the channel geometry, the absence of air-draft restrictions, the private land position, the rail access — that combination does not exist anywhere else on the lower Mississippi.”

WHAT THE PROJECT HAS ALREADY BUILT

For skeptics who have followed previous Gulf port development proposals — many of which have foundered on the twin shoals of regulatory complexity and capital formation — Louisiana 23 presents a compelling record of pre-construction progress.

The company completed 30 percent of the Phase 1 design in 2022 — a significant milestone that established the technical and engineering basis for the project and enabled the preparation of detailed construction cost estimates. Geotechnical field investigation has been contracted and executed, with the results available to potential lenders and investors through the project data room. USACE Section 404 and Section 408 public notices were completed in 2022 and 2023, with comprehensive technical responses submitted in 2024 and 2025.

A design-build contractor has been selected from a competitive field that included some of the largest marine construction firms in North America. The contractor consortium — comprising Massman Construction Company, Weeks Marine, and Jacobs Engineering in a joint venture — brings direct relevant experience in deep-water marine terminal construction, rail infrastructure, and large-scale industrial civil works. The contractor is prepared to issue a Guaranteed Maximum Price upon completion of 60 percent design, a milestone that Louisiana 23 expects to reach within months of financial close.

A Letter of Intent has been executed with a global anchor steamship line and terminal operator. While the identity of the operator is subject to a non-disclosure agreement pending the execution of a formal Terminal Services Agreement, sources familiar with the arrangement describe it as a major international container line with significant existing Gulf of Mexico and trans-Pacific service commitments.

On the land control front, SGL — a separately organized entity — controls approximately 400 acres of the development site under a long-term leasehold agreement, providing a significant component of the broader Phase 1 land position that underpins the project’s site plan and capital structure.

“Every one of those items — the geotechnical work, the 30 percent design, the contractor selection, the operator LOI, the permit process — represents years of focused effort and tens of millions of dollars invested in making this project real before the institutional capital markets ever got involved,” Fetters said. “That’s what a developer does. You spend years building something that institutional capital can then confidently invest in.”

A VISION MEASURED IN PHASES

If Phase 1 represents the foundation, the full LGT program envisions something considerably more ambitious: a five-phase, ten-year, $20 billion-plus development that would, upon completion, make Louisiana’s Gateway Terminal one of the five largest container terminal complexes in the United States by TEU capacity.

Phase 2, projected to cost approximately $4.2 billion and commence construction in 2028, would expand the terminal to five berths and 2.3 million TEUs of annual throughput, adding rail terminal storage and a major logistics park. Phase 3, at $4.5 billion, would bring capacity to 3.1 million TEUs across six berths. Phase 4, the most capital-intensive single phase at $5.6 billion, would open the project’s North Campus with an air cargo terminal at the existing Joint Readiness Base — New Orleans. Phase 5, at $4.5 billion, would complete the integration of all campuses and bring the terminal to its full 3.7 million TEU annual capacity across seven berths.

The phased structure is deliberate, Fetters says. Each phase is designed to achieve positive cash flow before the next phase begins — a conservative approach that insulates the overall program from single-phase execution risks.

“We are not building a hope,” he said. “Phase 1 is a profitable container terminal on its own terms. If nothing else ever gets built, Phase 1 generates strong returns for investors, services its debt, and operates as a viable business. Every phase after that is additive. The program gets bigger, but the risk profile at each entry point is disciplined.”

“Phase 1 is a profitable container terminal on its own terms. If nothing else ever gets built, Phase 1 generates strong returns for investors, services its debt, and operates as a viable business. Every phase after that is additive.”

— Christopher Fetters, CEO, Louisiana 23 Development Company

Crewe, who has spent more than four decades advising on port projects from Rotterdam to Singapore to Houston, is measured but clearly convinced.

“I have worked on many port projects over many years on many continents,” he said. “What distinguishes this one is the combination of site quality, regulatory progress, and the quality of the team around the developer. The site is genuinely extraordinary. The regulatory pathway is further advanced than most projects at this stage of capitalization. And the developer — Chris — has the engineering background to understand what he is actually building, which is rarer than you might think.”

WHAT COMES NEXT

The immediate priority for Louisiana 23 is the completion of the equity capital raise — up to approximately $300 million — which, combined with the approximately $900 million in targeted construction and term debt, would complete the approximately $1.2 billion Phase 1 capital stack and enable financial close.

Upon financial close and final authorizations, Louisiana 23 expects to issue a Notice to Proceed to the design-build contractor consortium, initiating the 60 percent design process and enabling the preparation of the Guaranteed Maximum Price that will establish the final construction cost ceiling. Civil site activities — including test pile programs, preliminary earthwork, and access road construction — are expected to begin in 2026, with full construction mobilization in 2027 and first-berth completion targeted for 2028 to 2030, subject to financial close, final authorizations, and GMP execution.

At that point, the first container vessel would tie up at a new American port for the first time in years — on a stretch of the lower Mississippi that geographers and engineers have recognized for decades as one of the most naturally advantaged deep-water port locations in the Western Hemisphere.

That the project has attracted serious attention is not limited to equity investors and lenders. Sources familiar with the matter indicate that at least one of the largest infrastructure firms in the world has approached Louisiana 23 with an expression of interest in acquiring the project outright — a signal, if any were still needed, of how the institutional market regards the site’s long-term value. Fetters has not pursued the conversation.

“This is personal,” he said. “I have spent more than a decade building this. I want to see it through.”

The team is assembled. The operator LOI is executed. Permits and financing are advancing toward financial close. What remains is the final equity commitment — and then, as Fetters puts it, the real work begins.

Disclosure: This is a story written based on verbal conversations with LA 23 over a two year period. We were unable to independently verify most of the claims made by LA 23. Do not rely on this article to make any financial commitment to LA 23 or its affiliates. This document does not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of any security. Forward-looking statements and preliminary estimates are subject to change without notice.