In the last dozen years, Richard Steinke has seen an international trade boom hit the nation’s shores, then fade as the economic downturn shrank imports for the first time ever at the Port of Long Beach. The Denver native left his hometown, where he was airport property officer, to join the port in 1990 as director of properties. He became deputy executive director in 1995 and took the top job two years later. Steinke’s office, on the sixth floor at the Port of Long Beach’s headquarters, has panoramic views of cranes, ships, cargo and trucks. But the scene isn’t as busy as it used to be: Last year, cargo levels decreased by 13 percent the port’s steepest drop ever. Steinke sees the slowdown as an opportunity to focus on building infrastructure, and implement the highly touted and controversial Clean Air Action Plan, a joint effort with the Port of Los Angeles that aims to reduce pollution by 80 percent by 2012. The most controversial aspect of the plan, the Clean Trucks Program, will allow only low-emission rigs to operate at the port. But it has been mired in lawsuits. Steinke met with the Business Journal at his office to discuss his career, family and golfing.
Question: After living most of your life in Denver, what was it like to move to Long Beach?
Answer: It was a big adjustment for me. I have to give a lot of credit to my wife, who moved around a lot as a child. When the job came up here at the Port of Long Beach, our oldest daughter had just started kindergarten. The timing was good as she hadn’t started to settle in yet. It was kind of an exciting time, and one where we didn’t know what we were going to get ourselves into because California is a big place.
Q: Where did you end up settling?
A: I’ve lived in eastern Long Beach in the same house since I moved here, near the Los Altos area. We ended up in a great neighborhood with a whole combination of neighbors that we could relate to right off the bat. One was an executive officer of the U.S. Coast Guard; another was one of the City Council members of Long Beach. Our next-door neighbor worked for the Long Beach
shipyard.
Q: Do you visit Denver often?
A: I try to visit Denver at least once to twice a year. We just went for Christmas. My parents and my wife’s parents are in Denver, along with my five siblings. I do miss the Rockies, too. The mountains there are different. The snow is different here. You know, going up to Big Bear and going skiing, well, it’s just not the same as back in Colorado.
Q: How did you meet your wife?
A: I was working for the city and county of Denver at Stapleton Airport and my wife was working for Hertz Rent-A-Car, training the reservation agents. I worked in the auditor’s office for the city and we were doing revenue audits of the concessions there at the airport and we met in 1979. We got married in 1981.
Q: What does she do?
A: She stayed at home raising the kids once we moved to Long Beach. She does a lot of volunteer work now. She graduated from Ball State University in Indiana with a teaching degree and taught a couple of years in Denver before I met her. My eldest daughter, Sarah, ended up being a teacher, living in San Francisco and teaching third grade in Palo Alto.
Q: What about the rest of your family?
A: My dad was a funeral director. My oldest and youngest sisters work as nurses. My brother has worked 30 years for the U.S. Forest Service. I work for the Port of Long Beach. My middle daughter is going to go to graduate school for social work, and my youngest daughter wants to be a dance teacher.
Q: Do you think that the general public understands the port?
A: No, I really don’t. I’d like to think we get the word out. When you go to a store, you get your product. But it took a lot of steps to get that product on the shelf. Somebody had to get it from a ship and put it on a train or a truck to get it to a warehouse. If the general public had to come down here to the Port of Long Beach and walk through a warehouse to get their product, they might have a better sense of our role.
Q: You have said that the slowdown is an opportunity to focus on infrastructure projects. What are your plans?
A: We recently kicked off a major redevelopment project at Pier G that will invest nearly $800 million dollars over the next 10 years to improve facilities, bring in 200 temporary construction jobs and allow ships to plug into electricity at berth, so they can shut down their polluting diesel engines and reduce air pollution by 100 percent.
Q: After that?
A: Next up is our Middle Harbor project, a $750 million proposed redevelopment of two existing, older terminals, now in the last stages of environmental review. That would add 14,000 new, permanent jobs in the area and about 1,000 temporary construction jobs per year over the next 10 years. Another project, the proposed $650 million development of Pier S, would create a new shipping terminal on vacant land that was formerly used for oil production. That would mean another 35,000
permanent, new jobs and during construction, more than 1,500 construction jobs per year. Construction could begin as soon as next year if approved.
Q: What about the Gerald Desmond Bridge?
A: We’d like to replace the aging bridge with a new, six-lane, cable-stayed bridge to ease congestion and improve traffic safety. The cost is $1.1 billion, and funding would come from a mix of port money, state bond funding and federal funds. We have the best credit for any port in the U.S. so we’re fortunate right now. Construction could begin next year and would take about seven years.
Q: In the Clean Trucks Program, two lawsuits have challenged L.A.’s position that drivers must be employees of the trucking companies. That has stalled progress. Is that frustrating?
A: We have to see what the courts decide. All parties recognize that we need to clean up the ports. The health of our residents is at stake. I think it’s the details that have some bothered, but not the end goal. That’s what we need to focus on.
Q: Were ports so overwhelmed with all the cargo traffic that pollution was a secondary consideration?
A: At the time, I don’t think we knew exactly what impact diesel trucks were having in terms of pollution. It took a collective effort to see how port activity affects the public in the San Pedro Bay. We are a major employer, but a major contributor to pollution.
Q: What is your relationship with the Port of Los Angeles?
A: There has been a lot of cooperation between the ports on regional issues, whether it’s the Alameda Corridor project or the Clean Air Action Plan. And we do all our of our cargo forecasting together.
Q: But you do compete for business and shipping lines, don’t you?
A: Oh, we’re very competitive in that sense. We’re all out there hustling after the same group of tenants. It’s a spirited competition, and who it really benefits is the customer, the shipping lines and the terminal operators. They know they have a choice and can go next door. Competition is a good thing and it makes us at the Port of Long Beach lean, creative and fast acting.
Q: How often do you get to travel to see the other ports around the world?
A: It depends. If there is a seminar that I speak at or we have a business in the area where we go see a customer, we go once or twice a year to various ports.
Q: Do business leaders and politicians here and abroad ever ask you what your political leanings are?
A: Other countries are very interested in what happens in the United States. As our economy goes, so goes theirs. There are a lot of questions about what I think about U.S. trade, environmental or human rights policies. I have to explain to them sometimes that the Port of Long Beach cannot just act unilaterally and do what we want. That’s part of the great thing of being American, people have the opportunity to discuss these things openly and publicly disagree with what’s going on. And some of these countries have a hard time wrapping their head around that.
Q: Do you ever declare what political party you belong to?
A: I’m neutral, I am independent and I have to work with any politician that gets elected so it really doesn’t benefit me to hitch my wagon to one party or the other.
Q: The Harbor Cup is a golf tournament that pits teams from the Port of Los Angeles against your port to raise money for schools. Who wins?
A: We got whooped again last year. I think we have only won once in the last 10 years, and it always seems, I swear, to be by one stroke. We’ve tied a number of times. You know we need to hire employees with better golf skills. Our best golfer is better than I am, but not that much better.
Q: Do you play often?
A: I love golf. I’ve got a group of guys that I play golf with every other weekend and it’s a great release to go out and have a good time. I’m not getting any better, but it’s still fun. I love baseball, big baseball fan.
Q: What’s your favorite team?
A: It’s the New York Yankees. I’ve always been a Yankee fan, from the time I was a kid. Let’s put it this way, I’m an American League fan. So I like the Angels and the Yankees. I love music, too. I have an eclectic music collection from classic rock to movie soundtracks to country music.
Q: What’s the last concert you went to?
A: Uh, this is bad because I just went to it, and it wasn’t my choice. I took my wife to see Neil Diamond in Las Vegas. We’ve actually seen him a number of times. But I did go see a group called New York Voices, which is a jazz quartet that sings a cappella. And the Doobie Brothers, which was a great show.
Q: What do you do for fun in Long Beach?
A: Now that the kids are older, we don’t do much with them anymore, but my wife and I like going to Cal State Long Beach for events, whether it’s a concert or a basketball game or baseball game at Blair Field. Sitting out there in Blair Field in May and watching Cal State Long Beach playing, you couldn’t find another good time.
Q: Films have been shot at the port, such as “Transformers” and “The Usual Suspects.” Have you run into celebrities or gone out to one of the movie sets?
A: No, I haven’t. You don’t have to go very far without seeing something filmed in the city or in the port. I think the fun part is when that film comes out and you say, “Oh, that’s the bridge that connects the city to the port!” or “That was on Pier T!” and working here you can recognize that.
Q: Do the ports compete for the films?
A: No, not really. We accommodate them, but they never say, “Oh, the Port of L.A. is giving us this and that’ as an incentive to film here.” There’s no competition on that one I can say.
RICHARD STEINKE
Title: Executive Director
Organization: Port of Long Beach
Born: 1956; Denver
Education: B.A., Chadron State College, Nebraska; graduate studies in public
administration at University of Colorado, Denver
Career Turning Point: Taking job as director of properties at Port of Long Beach in 1990
Most Influential People: Father, Gene Steinke, who taught him the importance of being a family man; and James Hankla, president of the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners, whose counsel has helped shape his vision at the ports
Personal: Lives in Long Beach with his wife, Tamy. They have three daughters: Sarah, 24; Kyle Marie, 22; and Lauren, 20
Hobbies: Playing golf, watching sports, spending time with family
