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Brooklyn Plans for QM2 Home Porting

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Jason

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On April 15, the long awaited arrival of Cunard Line's Queen Mary 2 will become reality, as the world's largest ship makes New York City's new $52 million Brooklyn Cruise Terminal her home port. Cunard reports that New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other dignitaries will be on hand to welcome the liner as she sails into New York and docks in Buttermilk Channel to celebrate the official opening of the new full-service facility at Pier 12 in Red Hook. Cunard Line as well as Princess Cruises will use the Red Hook facility.

In April 2004 after years of cruise line complaints about the poor conditions of the West Manhattan terminals, the Bloomberg Administration reached a historic agreement with Carnival Corp. that calls for the company to support the city's investments in cruise facilities in Brooklyn and Manhattan through port charges in exchange for berthing rights. In its first year of operation, the 182,000-square-foot Brooklyn Cruise Terminal is expected to welcome approximately 40 ships, including the new Crown Princess launching in June 2006. (SY)

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Here is an AP article on the opening of the new cruise terminal:

Cruise ships to begin calling in Brooklyn

(AP)  Starting Saturday, the world's biggest passenger ship will edge into a remote Brooklyn pier once known for coffee, corruption and crime.

Rather than Midtown Manhattan, where hotels are a quick cab ride away, the 2,200 passengers of the Queen Mary 2 will be in Red Hook, facing a convoluted trip through traffic-clogged streets to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel or the Brooklyn Bridge.

The arrival of the cruise ship, on the first of 11 scheduled visits to New York this year, marks the formal opening of the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. Visitors in the next few months will include its older Cunard sister, Queen Elizabeth 2, and four P&O Princess Cruise ships also owned by Carnival Corp.

The terminal came into being after several other cruise lines transferred from the outmoded cruise terminal on Manhattan's Upper West Side to Bayonne, N.J., dealing a blow to the city's $600 million annual cruise business. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's answer was a $150 million plan to upgrade the west side terminal and open a new one on Brooklyn's vacant pier 12.

Brooklyn officials expect the facility to inject new vitality into a gritty, long-neglected slice of Brooklyn whose name, dating from Dutch settler days, recalls an era when shipyards built sailing vessels; grain barged from the Middle West via the Erie Canal was loaded on ships for Europe; and the docks were plagued by labor strife as portrayed in the Oscar-winning 1954 film, "On the Waterfront."

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz concedes passengers won't spend much time or money in Red Hook as long as it remains only a place for arrivals and departures.

"My real objective, I want Brooklyn to be a port of call," Mr. Markowitz said. "Ships leaving Canada on their way to Florida, I want them to stop in Brooklyn. That's the real honey. Right now we've got the milk, but I want the honey."

The 180,000-square-foot terminal has been gussied up, with paint, landscaping and a Dodger-blue "Welcome to Brooklyn" logo. Dredging, dock improvements and other upgrades requested by Cunard pushed the $30 million cost estimate for a "basic vanilla" terminal to $52 million, said Janel Patterson, spokeswoman for the NYC Economic Development Corp.

City officials also cut the original estimate of 600 new jobs by half, and the terminal actually will have perhaps two dozen regular employees.

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