Future plans for the Queen Mary come with significant price tags, ranging from $105 million to retire and scrap the ship, to roughly $500 million to move the vessel and build a new dry dock.
Long Beach is now tasked with deciding how much money it will invest in critical repairs for the aging icon.
The Long Beach Harbor Commission is expected to vote later this year on whether to take control of the historic Queen Mary.
The Soviet submarine that has been moored next to the Queen Mary as a tourist attraction for more than two decades is so badly corroded that it’s in danger of sinking or rolling and possibly damaging Long Beach’s historic ocean liner, according to court documents.
The Long Beach City Council in April voted unanimously to explore possibly transferring control of Pier H, which includes the historic Queen Mary, the Long Beach Cruise Terminal, Hotel Maya and other businesses, to the Harbor Department that oversees the Port of Long Beach.
Long Beach last week took over daily operations of the ship for the first time in more than 40 years after its operator, Eagle Hospitality Trust, chose to give up the lease in Delaware bankruptcy court.
The Long Beach City Council on Tuesday will consider the immediate authorization of $500,000 in Tidelands Critical Infrastructure funds to begin work on safety and stability.
The city auditor since 2019 has been investigating how the Queen Mary’s operator spent $23 million to fix some of the most critical repairs listed in a marine survey.
Documents in Delaware bankruptcy court allege that Urban Commons principals Taylor Woods and Howard Wu conspired to split the Queen Mary’s employee payroll into two groups so they could apply for two different federal Paycheck Protection Program loans and maximize their aid money.
In an interview with the Post, Martin Docherty-Hughes, a member of the United Kingdom Parliament who represents the town where the Queen Mary was built, said he plans to raise the issue of the ship’s fate on the floor of the House of Commons.
