It seems that Providence is not the only city struggling to retain high-paying blue-collar port jobs in the face of condo developers out to exploit lucrative waterfront property. Similar battles are raging in Southern California, Florida, Maine, New York, New Jersey and North Carolina. But Providence’s brawl was the one probed in a panel discussion during the recent convention of the North Atlantic Ports Association at the Biltmore Hotel.

Those hoping to cash in on glitzy condo and marina development have called Providence’s gritty working waterfront hazardous and obsolete, studded with industrial “dinosaurs” that take up too much space for too few jobs. But that, of course, ignores what ports mean to a region’s economy.

Consider our “dinosaurs”:

• Promet Marine, a thriving company, has repaired boats for decades. Its two deepwater berths are able to handle ships up to 700 feet long.

• Providence Steamboat operates six tugboats on Narragansett Bay, including the state-of-the-art Z-drive tractor tug.

• Sprague Energy is a crucial source for home heating oil, diesel fuel, heavy industrial fuel and asphalt to southern New England. It also provides backup fuel to the adjacent natural-gas-fired power plant, keeping power going if the gas supply is halted for some reason.

While yet another condo development and marina might produce more property-tax revenue per square foot than port businesses, this option must be weighed against the region’s needs for hundreds of high-paying, highly skilled blue-collar jobs, thousands of spin-off and support jobs, and a steady supply of fuel and other goods at less-than-crippling prices.

The Providence Working Waterfront Alliance, formed to protect the port, maintains that the waterfront is responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of economic activity in the region. Some 2,000 ships move over 9 million tons of cargo through the port each year. If politicians were to throw away these benefits to please developers, the entire region would feel the loss.

And there’s more to a waterfront than its economic impact. The port has been part of the fabric of Providence for hundreds of years.

“People find working waterfronts fascinating,” said Christopher Hunter of Advocacy Solutions. “They love big ships, tugs, and ports filled with busy ship traffic.” He advised executives to take local politicians, opinion leaders and even schoolchildren out on tugboats to see what happens at a real port.

It can all disappear in a flash if politicians sell out to developers, speakers warned.

“Once it’s converted, you never get it back,” said Martin Moynihan, executive director of the Port of Richmond.

Or, as Francis Mahady of FXM Associates put it, a little more colorfully: “Once you’ve been a pickle, you can never be a cucumber again.”