Deja Vu: Vigor Replaces Dry Dock it Sold

Dry Dock 4
By NIGEL JAQUISS

Port watchers will remember that a dozen years ago, the ship repair company then called Cascade General (now called Vigor Industrial) sold the largest floating dry dock in the Western Hemisphere for $26.5 million.

The dock was at Swan Island on the Willamette River. The sale was controversial at the time because the company had only just bought its North Portland shipyard for $30.5 million. That purchase included what the Port called Dry Dock 4, which was built in 1976 with $84 million in public money.

Observers—including WW—speculated Cascade CEO Frank Foti was merely liquidating the assets he'd bought cheaply from the Port. When the massive (982 feet long, 87,000 ton) dry dock (a floating ship repair facility used to lift vessels out of the water) was towed off to the Bahamas, it seemed like the beginning of the end of Portland's ship repair business, which has operated at Swan Island on the Willamette for decades.

But Foti proved the doubters wrong.

Since 2000, he's built a thriving business on the Willamette and acquired Todd Shipyards in Seattle.

Today, Foti went full circle, announcing the purchase of a new $40 million dry dock, just about the same size as the dock he sold.

Here's the release from Vigor:

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