For once, I’ve got some positive news to report from Portland’s eastern waterfront.
Regular readers are well aware of the cruise ship-related shenanigans here: how city officials used obviously flawed economic assumptions to gain approval for the building of a new $20 million cruise ship terminal, leaving city taxpayers on the hook for a potential $400,000 annual loss when the structure was completed without a deep draft cruise ship berth and The Cat fled the scene. Instead of finding a solution, officials concentrated on “saving” the aging deep water pier next door by handing it over to politically-connected private developers, even though many of them knew the structure didn’t need saving.
Emerging from the wreckage of these disingenuous policies, the city seems to be finally focused on cleaning up the mess they left behind. Two developments in June go a long way towards stabilizing the situation — a good thing since Portland’s budget crisis has had it laying off firefighters, canceling bulky trash pickup, and reducing library hours.
First, the city has found a tenant to use Ocean Gateway’s shallow-draft berth, vacant since the demise of The Cat, the high-speed international ferry to Nova Scotia. American Cruise Lines, a Connecticut-based company operating small, no-frills vessels that can visit small harbors, announced June 8 it will be home porting two of its ships at the terminal.
Both the 87-ton American Glory (49 passengers) and the new 2200-ton Independence (104 passengers) will start and end their eight-day Maine coast cruises at the Portland terminal. This “home porting” substantially increases their economic impact, as passengers and crew must travel to and from Portland for their trip while the ships restock and take on fuel.
“It’s good news because passengers may stay at a hotel and expand their visit,” says city spokesperson Nicole Clegg, who provided figures suggesting cruise ship revenue at Ocean Gateway will double from $33,000 to $70,000 in the coming fiscal year. Renting the unused deep berth arrival hall for wedding receptions and other events is supposed to generate another $70,000.
While a good development, it still leaves Ocean Gateway with an enormous shortfall, and doesn’t come close to making up for the loss of The Cat, which accounted for over $100,000 in annual revenue. Add up the terminal’s estimated expenses — $280,000 in debt service, $70,000 in labor, operations, and maintenance, and perhaps $60,000 in electricity — and Portland taxpayers are still looking at a $270,000 loss this year. There’s little hope of turning a profit so long as the big 100,000-ton ships can’t use the facility.
Which leads us to the second development: state taxpayers are coming to Ocean Gateway’s rescue, having approved a $6.5 million allocation to complete the missing deep-draft cruise ship berth as part of a transportation bond measure on the June ballot. As a result, the Maine Department of Transportation will soon solicit bids to build this so-called “megaberth,” which will double Portland’s cruise ship capacity and presumably reduce the wear and tear at venerable city-owned Maine State Pier, where the big ships currently tie up.
One potential catch: previously the city estimated the new berth would cost $8 million, leaving potential $1.5 million funding gap. Ms. Clegg said the hope is that bids will come in lower than that. “With the economy sort of sluggish and the costs of construction projects coming in lower, we’re hoping that might be the case here,” she said. Failing that, she said the project would still go ahead somehow. “There are a whole host of things that could be done to change design elements, bring down costs, or take advantage of capital improvement funds.”
Meanwhile the city is expecting a record-breaking cruise ship season, with 70 ship visits and 75,000 passengers expected to call. While the city likes to say that the number of ships “has more than doubled” in “just two years,” it’s also only a 24% jump over 2001, when many ships were diverted here after the 9/11 attacks. Passenger figures in 2009 and 2010 are up substantially from the 2000-2008 average of 39,640 per season.