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Queen Mary 2, other cruise ships to dock in Brooklyn

By RICHARD PYLE | Associated Press Writer

April 12, 2006

NEW YORK - For nearly a century, great ocean liners ended their trans-Atlantic crossings with a grand finale _ a nautical stroll past the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan's soaring towers. That changes starting Saturday, when the world's biggest passenger ship edges into a remote Brooklyn pier once known for coffee, corruption and crime.

What happens when nearly 2,200 passengers step off the Queen Mary 2 is also different. Rather than midtown Manhattan where hotels are a quick cab ride away, they'll be in Red Hook, facing a convoluted trip through traffic-clogged streets to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel or the Brooklyn Bridge.

The arrival of the Queen Mary 2, on the first of 11 scheduled visits to New York this year, marks the formal opening of the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. Visitors in the next few months will include its older Cunard sister, Queen Elizabeth 2, and four P&O Princess Cruise ships also owned by Carnival Corp.

The terminal came into being after several other cruise lines transferred from the outmoded cruise terminal on Manhattan's Upper West Side to Bayonne, N.J., dealing a blow to the city's $600 million annual cruise business. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's answer was a $150 million plan to upgrade the west side terminal and open a new one on Brooklyn's vacant pier 12, where coffee-importing ships once tied up.

In 2004, Carnival and Norwegian Cruise Lines signed agreements guaranteeing at least 13 million visitors and $200 million in port charges to the city through 2017, but only Cunard and Princess, both owned by Carnival, plan to make Red Hook their New York home port.

Brooklyn officials expect the facility to inject new vitality into a gritty, long-neglected slice of Brooklyn whose name, dating from Dutch settler days, recalls an era when shipyards built sailing vessels; grain barged from the Middle West via the Erie Canal was loaded on ships for Europe; and the docks were plagued by labor strife as portrayed in the Oscar-winning 1954 film, "On the Waterfront."

While developers have recently discovered Red Hook, visitors might find it a picturesque but amenities-deprived melange of brick streets, 19th-century warehouses, flower pots on stoops and attack-trained Dobermans and a Rottweiler named "Pretty Boy" snarling behind chain-link fences.

Even Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn's borough president, concedes passengers won't spend much time or money in Red Hook as long as it remains only a place for arrivals and departures.

"My real objective, I want Brooklyn to be a port of call," Markowitz said in an interview. "Ships leaving Canada on their way to Florida, I want them to stop in Brooklyn. That's the real honey. Right now we've got the milk, but I want the honey."

To that end, Brooklyn will promote its attractions at a terminal kiosk and in brochures aboard ships. "I don't want to take anything away from Manhattan. I want people to understand there is something beyond Manhattan," Markowitz said.

Red Hook residents have mixed views about cruise ships docking at their front door.

"It's going to be good," said transit worker Richard Meyer, 52, a Red Hook native. "When I retire I can just wheel my luggage down to the dock and go for a cruise."

Others complain that the terminal is not creating jobs for Red Hook itself. "Everybody over there seems to be from somewhere else," said Jean Francois, a laid-off truck driver who lives nearby.

Justo Lugo, 42, said he had been turned away twice. "I thought I was going to get a job but it seems if you don't know anyone you won't get anything. They seem to be giving me the brushoff now."

Residents of adjacent neighborhoods, meanwhile, fear a flood of trucks, cars, taxis and buses as a small army of drivers, cleaners and reprovisioners swarms over each arriving ship, while disembarking passengers are "hustled off," as Markowitz puts it, and new ones board in time for the lunch buffet.

"It'll be a traffic nightmare _ everything from heavy trucks to gypsy cabs," predicted Vincent Favorito, a lawyer in nearby Carroll Gardens, who sits on a local waterfront economic development committee. "I haven't seen anything resembling a plan to move people on and off the ships and get to the tunnel to Manhattan."

Markowitz shrugs off such concerns, saying ships arriving on weekends during the April-October cruise season should have minimal impact. Moreover, he said, the terminal was designed for handling 4,000 people at a time.

The 180,000-square-foot terminal has been gussied up, with paint, landscaping and a Dodger-blue "Welcome to Brooklyn" logo. Dredging, dock improvements and other upgrades requested by Cunard pushed the $30 million cost estimate for a "basic vanilla" terminal to $52 million, said Janel Patterson, spokeswoman for the NYC Economic Development Corp.

City officials also cut the original estimate of 600 new jobs by half, and the terminal actually will have perhaps two dozen regular employees.

How the 1,132-foot QM2 will maneuver in the tight confines of Buttermilk Channel, a tidal strait separating Brooklyn from Governors Island, was not clear, but the ship is equipped with spacecraft-type thrusters enabling it to dock without tugboats.

Queen Mary 2, the only liner in scheduled trans-Atlantic service, will make nine crossings between now and November, plus two fall visits to Canada. The QE2 calls on Sept. 19 during its annual round-the-world voyage, and Princess ships, including the new, 3,100-passenger Crown Princess, will make 15 trips to the Caribbean from Brooklyn.

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On the Net: http://www.brooklyncruiseguide.com