Eight towering cranes joined Savannah’s downtown skyline about 18 months ago only to sit largely idle since.

That’s about to change as the Georgia Ports Authority’s huge makeover of a 200-acre cargo facility, Ocean Terminal, enters a new phase.

Crews recently finished a 2,650-foot-long wharf along the Savannah River on the western edge of the historic city’s downtown. The completion clears the way for the terminal to handle additional cargo containers as it increases annual capacity from 200,000 container units to 1.75 million.

Initial plans are for Ocean Terminal to take over the loading and unloading of smaller ships that currently call on its sister facility, the Garden City Terminal. Garden City is the third-busiest cargo container terminal in the United States and 2 miles upriver from Ocean Terminal.

Read more at AJC.