Make Way for the Queens
April 19, 2005
Manhattan's bustling Hudson River Piers has long been home to some of the world's largest, most famous, and most luxurious cruise ships. However beginning next year, this historic docking site will be losing several very important clients. The Carnival Corporation announced recently that it will be moving four of its most luxurious vessels to a massive new pier that the city of New York is redeveloping in Brooklyn's up and coming Red Hook District.
The new Red Hook Ship Terminal is part of a $150 million development project that will also include the West Side Passenger Ship Terminal between 48th and 52nd streets in Manhattan, which is well overdue for some much needed expansion and other improvements. The outdated Manhattan terminal hasn't undergone any kind of major repair or renovation in 35 years, and is actually to small for some colossal vessels such as the Queen Mary 2, which now extends 132 feet past the end of the pier into the Hudson River when docked. Once completed, the new Brooklyn pier will be a sprawling 180,000 square foot modern facility capable of accommodating as many as 4,000 cruise passengers at one time. The Red Hook Terminal will be the new home to the 1,132-foot Queen Mary 2, currently the largest cruise ship in the world, in addition to the legendary, 963-foot Queen Elizabeth 2, Princess Cruise's Star Princess, as well as the Crown Princess, which is set to make its debut early next year as an extremely large and impressive new addition to the Princess fleet.
"We're looking forward to being the inaugural tenant of this brand new development," Dean Brown, executive vice president of fleet operations for Carnival's Cunard and Princess Cruise Lines, told the New York Times. The city of New York says that moving these well-known ships from Manhattan is a positive step in the right direction for Brooklyn's on-going revitalization. The move is also expected to increase the cities overall annual cruise traffic, increasing the total number of cruise passengers visiting the city in a year from 950,000, to nearly 1.2 million passengers per year. In addition, the city predicts that the ship shift will create thousands of new jobs, encourage the continuous growth of the retail and tourism-industry in the area, and help to bring some life and vibrancy back into what was once a dejected and virtually abandoned industrial warehouse district.
The Queen Mary 2, the Queen Elizabeth 2, the Star Princess, and the Crown Princess will begin sailing from the new Brooklyn terminal on a variety of Caribbean, Canada/New England, and Transatlantic itineraries beginning in April of next year.
Brian Reitter
Source: www.thenewyorktimes.com
