July 31, 2026

By Lane Kimble

GREEN BAY — The ground under your feet quakes and the river water pulses, much like the scene in Jurassic Park when the T-Rex is about to emerge.

But it’s a different beast that’s helping transform the Port of Green Bay this summer.

“This isn’t the truly big ‘King Kong’, but it’s the ‘Baby King Kong,’ as we like to call it,” site superintendent Keith Keskimaki says, pointing to a huge yellow device hanging from a crane.

Don’t let the name fool you – this “baby” still weighs about 45,000 pounds, driving 80-foot-tall pile cans deep into the Fox River’s soil.

“They’re pretty good sized,” Keskimaki said of the cans. “Everything about this project is big.”

Keskimaki and his Zenith Tech, Inc. (Walbec Group) team are hard at work, turning the old Pulliam Power Plant site just north of the Leo Frigo Bridge into a modernized shipping port.

“Baby Kong’s” pile driving will help anchor a 2,000-foot dock wall, stretching 600 feet into the bay. The finished product will allow huge Great Lakes cargo ships to haul salt, coal, and other commodities into a place they never could before.

It’s the result of years of debate and negotiations between businesses, city, county, state and federal leaders on what to do with the century-old industrial area.

“It’s amazing just to see the progress. I remember this area just being a swamp, a polluted area that was a wasteland,” State Sen. Eric Wimberger told WTBA during a site tour Wednesday.

WTBA Director of Government Affairs Elise Nelson coordinated with six state lawmakers to bring them into the work area and meet with crews.

Wimberger, who sits on the state’s budget-writing committee, pushed to include $20 million for the project in the 2023-25 state budget and helped ensure Brown County retained a $15 million grant, too.

“Someone will say, ‘Oh, we need this much money,’ and a lot of times people don’t have a concept of why,” Wimberger said. “Seeing this machinery, the massive size of the equipment and the materials puts in perspective why things cost, in this case, $50 million to achieve.”

Some of that massive machinery is out in the bay itself. ZTI crews are currently dredging 200,000 cubic yards of material to make the port deep enough for the large ships.

The combination of ZTI’s abilities and Northeast Asphalt’s grading and paving skills allowed the Walbec Group to win the project without any outside subcontractors, coming in millions below the next-lowest bidder.

Lawmakers were glad to meet Wisconsin-based companies with local employees doing the job.

“Green Bay has a history of being a blue-collar community,” State Rep. Amaad Rivera-Wagner said. “You come to Green Bay to work hard, and when you work hard you’re able to do cool things. The employers that are bringing these employees together to help build this community really is something special.”

The port work will also help revitalize the city of Green Bay itself. A company signed an agreement to relocate huge coal piles from prime riverfront property to a different storage area, thanks to storage space for salt that the port will open up.

This huge undertaking is still more than a year from completion. The dock wall and surrounding foundation needs to sit for at least six months once in-place before NEA can pave the area and ATC can move its electrical towers.

But by 2028, people living and working in the redeveloped port will be able to watch titanic ships float into the area thanks to WTBA-member work on a blockbuster project for Green Bay.

“Oh yeah,” Keskimaki said.  “That’ll be something to see.”