A crowd turned out to welcome her, and the gleaming white ship with the
bellowing horn, which burst out louder than even the amplified booming
of Borough President Marty Markowitz’s voice, didn’t disappoint.
On Saturday morning, the Oriana, a transatlantic luxury liner, docked
in Red Hook, prematurely christening the piers that will usher a glamorous
industry of Queens and Princesses to the county of Kings.
The gathering at Pier 12, which was largely comprised of industry and
city insiders — the public was prohibited entry — took place
in front of a stage set up on the pier just off Pioneer Street.
The ship, which had set sail from London, pulled into Buttermilk Channel
just after 7 am. Passengers, at least those who were awake, patiently
waited onboard and watched from the decks and stateroom balconies as the
press conference welcoming their arrival commenced.
“I did come in today with some fears,” said Michael Carr, the
Australian captain of the Oriana.
“I thought they sent me to the wrong port and the wrong wharf, since
all I saw was a bundle of bollards,” he said about pictures he received
a week before arriving.
He added, however, that the arrival went smoothly.
“It was lovely to come in this morning,” Carr said.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who orchestrated the officially non-campaign
event during a day of campaign stops, said to the captain and his passengers
and crew, “We have 8.1 million New Yorkers who welcome you today.”
Bloomberg said the ship’s arrival was out of necessity, although
according to the city’s Economic Development Corporation, there are
no others scheduled in Brooklyn until this April, when the $45 million
Red Hook Cruise Terminal is slated to open.
“Today we had a parking problem in Manhattan,” explained Bloomberg,
who pointed out that one too many ships — six, for the five Manhattan
cruise docks — had arrived and so they rerouted one to the Red Hook
pier, which at capacity could eventually hold two ships at a time and
is expected to dock the world’s largest luxury liner, the Queen Mary
II.
At an October 2004 hearing before the city’s waterfront committee
— chaired by Councilman David Yassky, who also attended the cruise
event Saturday — EDC Vice President Kate Ascher said the overcrowding
of piers has been happening with increasing regularity, and the Manhattan
cruise terminal had faced as many as seven bookings for the five piers
at one time. Normally, they would have the ships take turns unloading
passengers.
But the arrival Saturday gave locals a taste of what to expect when the
terminal opens. For starters, the street by which tourists will arrive,
at the base of Pier 11 running parallel to the industrial Imlay Street,
is closed off from public access, and fenced in, requiring admittance
by a guard.
In earlier conceptual plans Community Board 6, whose district has welcomed
the terminal, had hoped the street would fulfill hopes they had to create
a new local roadway.
Shuttle buses took cruise ship passengers to official NYC & Company
tourist centers, according to a press release, in Midtown and Lower Manhattan,
as well as to the Brooklyn Tourism & Visitor Center at Borough Hall,
and to Grand Army Plaza to visit the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and the
Brooklyn Museum.
Nearly half of the 1,800 visitors arriving on the Oriana had pre-booked
one of seven of the cruise-offered tours, which featured attractions primarily
outside the borough, such as the Empire State building, Statue of Liberty,
Harlem and the Bronx Zoo.
Not that passengers wouldn’t get a taste of Brooklyn.
If nothing else, everyone got that as Uncle Louie G’s ices, Jamaican
patties from Tower Isle’s, and Erica’s Rugelach, as well as
beer from Brooklyn Brewery, were served upon the passengers’ return
to the ship.
“It’s an opportunity to show off Brooklyn,” said Markowitz.
Both Norwegian and Carnival cruise lines have promised to use New York
City ports exclusively for their own fleets and subsidiaries, and pay
higher tariffs through 2017 that would supply $200 million to the city,
in exchange for a 10-year West Side pier renovation project in Manhattan.
Last year, the city lost Royal Caribbean to a port just across the harbor
from the Red Hook piers, in Bayonne, N.J.
Elected officials, the city, and business groups have promoted the Red
Hook terminal as promising 600 new jobs.
Yet in December, the city forced American Stevedoring Inc. (ASI), a cargo
shipping company, off Pier 11 saying it was needed as an access route
from Bowne Street to the new terminal. This summer, the same pier was
advertised as vacant, and available for interested parties.
The shipping company has said the loss of Pier 10, which the city has
suggested it will need to expand the cruise terminal down the line, would
put their own 600 employees out of work in Brooklyn.
Markowitz, answering questions about the retention of the existing jobs,
said, “It’s all up to the [city Economic Development Corporation].”
“This kind of work will increase jobs on the waterfront,” the
borough president said. “It’s going to increase pay scales.”
He declined to say why the cruise industry jobs would pay more than did
the shipping jobs.
“My hope is in two years to get Royal Caribbean to come over to Brooklyn,”
he added.
