Long Beach votes to negotiate transfer of Queen Mary to Harbor Department

Long Beach City Council members voted to statesman negotiations to transportation power of Pier H and the Queen Mary implicit to the Harbor Department astatine their gathering connected Tuesday, Sept. 14.

Now the metropolis manager’s bureau and the Harbor Department volition commencement to hammer retired the details of however to transportation implicit the 40 acres of parks, cruise terminals and parking tons surrounding the pier and the Queen Mary. After the departments negotiate, the City Council volition inactive person to o.k. them astatine a aboriginal assembly meeting.

“The larboard is simply a section of the city,” said Vice Mayor Rex Richardson astatine the meeting. “We are 1 metropolis family. It is important to enactment together.”

Now that assembly members person voted yes, the metropolis and Harbor Department volition negociate issues including attraction and semipermanent preservation of the Queen Mary, absorption of the pier’s different tenants and budgeting and unit organization, the city’s unit study reads. Both departments volition besides commencement determining a timeline and semipermanent feasibility program for the Queen Mary, said Economic Development Director John Keisler astatine the meeting.

“Hopefully unneurotic we tin travel up with immoderate answers successful presumption of what the options are,” said Mario Cordero, enforcement manager of the Port of Long Beach.

The Port of Long Beach is portion of the metropolis and the harbor commission’s members get appointed by the mayor, but the larboard mostly operates arsenic an autarkic entity and manages its ain budget. The details that indispensable get worked retired earlier the Harbor Department tin instrumentality implicit Pier H, according to a unit report, include:

• An wide modulation plan, which would see the organizational structure, the projected fund and different logistical concerns.
• A modulation program for Pier H tenants, including Carnival Cruise Lines and Catalina Express.
• Maintenance and betterment plans.
• How to reopen the Queen Mary edifice and lawsuit spaces.

Only 1 speaker, Jessica Alvarenga, opposed the transportation of Pier H and the Queen Mary to the Harbor Department.

“It is simply a task that has consistently failed for implicit 40 years,” Alvarenga said during the nationalist remark information of the meeting. Alvarenga is the manager of authorities affairs for the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, a shipping relation that has agelong opposed keeping the Queen Mary successful Long Beach.

She argued the Queen Mary is simply a sinking vessel and that supporting it would outgo excessively much.

Indeed, preserving and redeeming the vessel would outgo the metropolis a batch of money. Preserving the vessel successful spot would outgo tens of millions of dollars conscionable to get into signifier and past $5 cardinal annually –– costing up to $175 cardinal full implicit 25 years.

However getting escaped of the vessel would beryllium costly, too. The aforesaid analysis showed it would outgo astatine slightest $100 million nary substance which enactment the metropolis chose — including deconstructing it.

The metropolis regained power implicit the World War II-era vessel aft Urban Commons Queensway surrendered its lease pursuing a bankruptcy assertion and questions into however overmuch advancement the institution really made successful repairing the Queen Mary.

For the archetypal clip successful implicit 40 years, Long Beach present controls the ship’s day-to-day operations, which would get transferred to the Harbor Department if the negotiations are approved.