In January, three of the largest seaport cranes in the Northwest will arrive at the Port of Seattle, and with the change in shoreline scenery comes a financial deal that has some watchdog agencies and Port commissioners concerned.

For decades, the Port bought and owned the cranes along Seattle's Elliott Bay while private companies maintained and operated them. The companies paid the Port for every container they plucked off ships.

That relationship changed last week, when the Port approved a deal with SSA Terminals, which operates out of Terminal 18. For the next five years, the company no longer has to pay the fee, but it has to buy more of its own cranes — three of which are arriving in January. Another three are coming in the next couple of years.

The Port will lose $5.31 million in revenue over the next five years under the deal but will ultimately save $232,000 during that time because it won't have to replace the pricey cranes, according to Port documents. The Port was planning to replace its cranes at Terminal 18 by 2018. There are seven there now.

"We're being kind of cast about on the sea of global competitive forces, and even regional competitive forces," said Tom Albro, Port of Seattle commissioner.

Most of the multicolored shipping containers that arrive by ship in Elliott Bay are just passing through Seattle. Cranes load the containers on trains and trucks headed to Chicago, the Ohio Valley and the East Coast.

And if the prices here are too high, shipping companies can channel their goods through another of the ports that dot the West Coast. Even longstanding competition with the Port of Tacoma undermines Seattle's pricing power.

At the Port's Terminal 18, the number of containers coming in has dropped in the past few months, after a record year. And whether the recession or national competition is to blame, SSA is looking to pick things up — 146 feet up.

Its new cranes are going to be huge, with arm spans that can stretch across ships 22 containers wide. The Port-owned cranes now at Terminal 18 can reach across 18 containers.

The widening of the Panama Canal is largely responsible for the growth spurt in cranes over the past few years. Starting in 2014, larger ships will be able to pass through the canal, so shipbuilders have responded by making larger vessels. In turn, ports need bigger cranes to unload them.

Port commissioners said last week's deal with SSA seems necessary to keep Seattle in business. Particularly because "any kind of demise of Terminal 18 would have a cascading effect" to other terminals, Albro said.

But some critics say the agreement cuts SSA too good a deal. It offers three benefits to the company:

• SSA no longer has to pay $11.60 for every container it lifts from a ship and puts on the dock's rail system.

• SSA will no longer pay a standard minimum rent for the Port's cranes, and likely will save money paying based on actual use instead.

• The company has paid for lease security at the Port in cash. The cash is kept in a bank account and it's been debated whether the interest that has accrued should belong to the Port or to SSA. This deal gives it to SSA.

Port-monitoring agencies, including Puget Sound Sage and Change to Win, say this is granting too much. Paul Marvy, an attorney at Change to Win, said the deal will amount to an "outrageous giveaway" to SSA.

SSA, partly owned by Goldman Sachs, is coming off a record year in the number of boxes it handled, making this deal an unnecessary concession, said David Mendoza, a policy analyst for labor-advocacy group Puget Sound Sage.

The Port of Seattle gets a share of King County residents' property taxes to help pay for seaport infrastructure, so taxpayers will feel the cost of the deal, Mendoza said.

SSA's record cargo last year was likely boosted by a Port decision to eliminate the container-lift fee for a year, between 2009 and 2010, as part of a package to help terminal operators weather the recession, said Michael Burke, the Port's director of seaport leasing and asset management.

SSA passes savings from the waived fee on to customers to encourage more container companies to come to the terminal, said Mark Knudsen, vice president of business development at SSA. He mentioned at a recent Port commission meeting that SSA would like to see this waiver extended past the next five years just agreed to.

Commissioner John Creighton said he's concerned the deal might set a precedent for the Port to get rid of a fee it is "perfectly justified" in charging.

"I think a lot of shipping companies can't resist the race to the bottom," Creighton said at the July meeting. "Looking to the future, I wouldn't want us to trade short-term competitiveness on lowering our costs with long-term competitiveness on making enough money to invest back in our terminals, so they're not falling into the sea."

He repeated the concern last week before joining the other commissioners in unanimously passing the deal. Other commissioners expressed concerns but said they have to keep cargo coming into the Port and create jobs.

It takes about 20 longshore personnel to operate an SSA crane at Terminal 18, and bigger cranes mean more containers to be moved and more jobs, said Cameron Williams, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 19.

Trend to private cranes

The new cranes that are headed to Seattle would have cost the Port between $9 and $10 million each, according to Port estimates.

But SSA should be able to take 10 percent off that price tag. The company can buy the cranes cheaper and receive them faster than the Port because it has market leverage and doesn't need to go through a public bidding contract, according to Port documents.

This switch to have crane operators purchase their equipment is a national trend, said Burke, the Port's director of seaport leasing and asset management. The Port of Seattle is behind the curve: SSA is currently the only company that owns its cranes here. The company has owned four cranes for its Seattle operations since 2006.

But there could be changes ahead. The Port is required under a lease agreement to also get rid of the $11.60 per-container fee for Eagle Marine Services, a company that operates cranes at one of the other terminals. The Port has four container terminals, but only Terminal 18, where SSA operates, and Terminal 5, which Eagle Marine operates, have on-dock rail and are eligible to have the fee lifted.

This would equal an additional $1.18 million loss in Port revenue over the next five years, according to Port documents. But Burke said Eagle Marine would have to find a way to make up that lost money.

Negotiations with Eagle Marine will begin immediately, Burke said, and although the company doesn't have to start purchasing its own cranes like SSA, it would have to come up with some solution to have that fee lifted.

"We're not giving money away here," Burke said. "The money that we give up has to be balanced by what we save."