Brooklyn cruise facility ready to welcome ships, passengers

(09/22/2005)

By Eric Marx

 With abundant piers and low sedimentary river buildup, a Brooklyn cruise pier makes logistical sense. Yet its close proximity to Manhattan hasn’t helped Brooklyn -- cruise lines have always chosen to sail directly from Midtown.

That will change this month, when P&O Cruises’ Oriana makes the first Brooklyn cruise call on Sept. 24. And next year, when Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2 and Princess Cruises’ ships come calling, close to 300,000 passengers are expected to pass through the Brooklyn facility.

Long-term lease agreements reached between New York and Norwegian Cruise Line and Carnival Corp. have enabled Brooklyn cruising to became a reality.

The agreements are unprecedented for New York both in duration and passenger-volume commitments, said Kate Ascher, vice president of the New York City Economic Development Corp. (EDC), which is managing construction and brokered the deal between the city and the cruise lines.

The lease requires NCL and Carnival to bring at least 13 million passengers to New York and to pay the city more than $200 million in port charges through 2017. In return, the city committed to give each line preferential berths on specific piers and offered the cruise lines incentives in the form of fee reductions in exchange for volume and revenue guarantees, along with providing incentives to promote growth beyond current projections.

So far, only cruise lines from the P&O Princess International division of Carnival have committed to Brooklyn.

Princess Cruises is taking full advantage of the deal. The new Crown Princess and the world’s largest ocean liner, Cunard’s Queen Mary 2, will make the Brooklyn terminal their exclusive New York port and are expected to launch close to 50 sailings by the end of 2006.

Since 9/11, the popularity of cruises departing from U.S. ports has increased markedly, according to the Cruise Lines Industry Association.

Consequently, some cruise lines have had difficulty scheduling berthing space at increasingly crowded ports. In 2004, Royal Caribbean relocated two of its ships across the Hudson River to Cape Liberty Cruise Port in Bayonne, N.J., after it encountered difficulty finding adequate dock space at New York Cruise Terminal in Manhattan -- a move that prompted calls for the city to expand its cruise berths by developing Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn location is expected to be one of the speediest and most efficient terminals in the country, said architect Luis Ajamil, whose firm, Bermello Ajamil & Partners, designed the terminal.

The 28-acre site will provide approximately 600 parking spaces and a passenger pick-up and drop-off area that will facilitate quick curbside check-in. A glass gangway tube adjustable to multiple door elevations will speed boarding and disembarkation, as will a one-stop customs-immigration processing system and marginal berths that grant ships easier maneuverability into their slips.

New access roads will ease traffic congestion on local streets and provide a comfortable gateway to specially designed viewing platforms. Water taxis will drop off passengers in an adjacent river basin area.

With spectacular vistas of the Manhattan skyline framing the world’s largest ships, the site is expected to draw not just passenger friends and family but curious New Yorkers and tourists.

“Bringing Princess and Cunard to Brooklyn is part of our long-term effort to create maritime jobs and transform the Brooklyn waterfront into a thriving commercial district while keeping an eye toward history and preserving its unique culture and vitality,” Ascher said. “Thousands of travelers will get to experience not only a first-class terminal, but all the wonderful neighborhoods, restaurants and entertainment possibilities that Brooklyn has to offer.”

In 2004, nearly 900,000 passengers came through the New York Cruise Terminal, on the west side of Manhattan, up from an average of 400,000 in the 1990s. Volumes are forecast to increase to 1.5 million passengers by 2017.

The EDC estimates that the cruise industry supports more than 3,300 jobs and generates total economic activity of about $600 million, which is expected to grow to $1.2 billion by 2014.

As for the New York Cruise Terminal -- an outdated and cramped facility built in the 1930s and last renovated in the 1970s -- improvements will include the installation of adjustable gangways and expanded pier aprons. This will allow passengers and supplies to be loaded and unloaded with greater comfort and efficiency, Ascher said.

New terminals will segregate embarking and disembarking passengers onto separate levels, allowing for more efficient use of space and reducing congestion caused by passengers arriving and departing at the same time. In addition, the new facilities will have enhanced security measures, new passenger drop-off areas and more parking.

Eventually the terminal will be transformed into a three-pier facility (from four piers at present) and will maintain uninterrupted service and annual volumes by sequentially rotating the renovations and through a more spread out sailing schedule, Ajamil said.

Renovations are expected to be completed by 2009, with an additional two slips at the Brooklyn facility available for further expansion should the need arise.

“It’s the first time that one city has split its cruise operations into multiple locations and really afforded multiple communities the opportunity to take advantage of what the cruise industry has to offer,” Ajamil said