A surprising and unforeseen aspect of efforts to preserve Providence’s industrial waterfront is the degree to which it has succeeded in promoting the city’s long-overlooked port, the source of Providence’s original prosperity.

Now it seems that people who may have forgotten that the city even had a working waterfront are talking up its recently redredged channel, excellent intermodal rail and Interstate Highway System connections, generous cargo-handling area and the advantages of the marine trades in general. Ports have big economic multiplier effects and they lower some prices in their areas.

One new fan is Providence’s mayor, David Cicilline, who recently traveled to Washington, D.C., seeking $39 million in federal stimulus funds for major upgrades and expansion at the Port of Providence, that stretch off Allens Avenue that for years seemed consigned in a literal sense to the scrap heap of history, since scrap steel is one of the few commodities handled there.

If the funds come through, and in this effort Mayor Cicilline has enlisted the Rhode Island congressional delegation, it will work an impressive transformation on ProvPort. The funds would pay for two barge-based container/cargo cranes, two 150-to-250-foot wind turbines and solar panels providing electricity to operate the entire facility (with any extra sold to the electrical grid), and, says an analysis by Bryant University, 1,000 well-paying jobs.

It would be a green port not only in electricity generation, but also because it would help keep cargo containers off the highways, where many are moved today, by facilitating their shipment from other U.S. ports, such as New York, by barge — so-called short-sea shipping.

This is exactly what the mayor should be doing, and not for only ProvPort, but for the entire port, including the threatened northern section of the waterfront. Hotel and condominium developers would love to get a hold of that, to the detriment of several long-established businesses and any future development of Providence’s venerable and profitable port.

Better longshoremen’s jobs than maid and bus boy jobs!