Traci O’Donaghue pauses mid-sentence as the hulking freighter slips by the River Street MarketPlace on its way to the Georgia Ports Authority terminal.

“Look at that,” O’Donaghue says after a moment. “I’m from Savannah and seen ships go up the river for decades. But I’m still in awe every time I see a ship go by. Imagine watching one go by from a table right here.”

   

  The developers plan to develop the riverfront property just east of the open-air marketplace into a retail and restaurant complex. The site’s current occupant, Moran Towing, will move its offices and tugboats across the river to Hutchinson Island when its lease expires next spring.

O’Donaghue’s group, RPD, will begin redeveloping the site the day Moran moves out. Plans call for a 26,000-square-foot complex of two-story buildings that will link the River Street MarketPlace, which RPD developed and opened in 2003, with Morrell Park.

 

O’Donaghue and her leasing agents, NAI Savannah’s Rex Benton and Dicky Mopper, see the complex as the gateway to opening up the east end of River Street. The Moran complex sits across from the most easterly storefront building on River Street — the building houses the Olde Harbour Inn as well as small retail shops — and marks the unofficial commercial end of the street.