You have almost got to admire the chutzpah of Long Beach City leaders in 1967.
Picture this scenario (courtesy of the Way-Back machine): It’s 1967 and in a nameless downtown restaurant, a quartet of city power brokers–a real bunch of good ol’ boys–are sipping scotch and lamenting the serious economic problems facing the city.
GOB (Good ol’ boy) 1: Gentlemen, if we are going to attract the really big money to Long Beach, we have to compete as a world city. And what does every world city have? What we need is a symbol.
GOB 4: What for? We already have a major seaport, major airplane manufacturing facilities, one of the nation’s busiest general aviation airports, the Coney Island of the West, and not-to-mention the Navy base.
GOB 2: Those are fine, but what we need is something to really define what Long Beach is. An icon.
GOB 3: Like the Empire State Building, or the Eiffel Tower, or even that Space tower thing in Seattle.
GOB 1: We used to have the Miss Universe Pageant.
GOB 2: Not the most progressive symbol (chuckles all around).
GOB 3: I hear the Brits are trying to sell the Queen Mary.
GOB 1: The old ocean liner?
GOB 4: What’s that got to do with Long Beach?
GOB 2: Nothing, which makes it perfect. We’ll make it our own.
GOB 4: Our own what? Nothing says “modern American city” like an aging, rundown and obsolete foreign ocean liner that had its heyday 30 years ago.
GOB 3: Well we do have all that money from the Tidelands oil wells that we need to spend. Weren’t we supposed to build a maritime museum with some of that money? We can make the Queen Mary the center of the museum. Hell, we can gut the inside of the ship and put the museum inside. We can park it over by the Nu-Pike.
GOB 1: I like it. Our own tourist attraction like Disneyland, but with class.
GOB 4: Sure. Except with a theme based on an outmoded form of transportation and minus the rides–real class.
GOB 2: Always the cynic, eh, number 4? Don’t worry. If Disney can do it with a talking rat and duck, we can certainly do it with a classy ocean liner. We’ll spruce it up, give it a fresh coat of paint, add some displays and it’ll draw people from around the country. It’ll put us on the map and the big money will flow, flow, flow. We’ll have to beat the investors and developers back. Gentlemen, I think our problems are solved. The International City has found its new icon.
GOB 4: Oh, great. Maybe we can find the world’s largest non-flying airplane and park it next door.
GOB 1,2,3: Will you shut up.
Okay, to be fair, none of this conversation happened except in my fervent little parallel-world mind. And the reason for this little scripted revision of history?
On Tuesday, the City Council received an audit report detailing the latest attempts to turn the Queen Mary into something people outside of Long Beach care about. As is typical of nearly every pie-in-the-sky project that has come down the pike (no pun intended) since the city spent $3.5 million to buy the liner in 1967, the City Council heard Tuesday that the latest attempt is not quite meeting the mark.
The latest lease holder of the Queen Mary (the ship is owned by the city), a group named Save The Queen, bought the Queen Mary Master Lease for $43 million at a bankruptcy auction following the disastrous implosion of the last lease-holder, Queen’s Seaport Development, Inc. As part of the lease agreement with the city, STQ promised to make $5.3 million in improvements to the ship, all of which would be deducted from certain rent money owned the city through 2010. Part of this agreement required STQ to perform the improvements on a schedule, with $2.8 million in improvements supposed to be implemented by December of last year.
Keep in mind that because the city is deducting these improvement amounts from rent that is owed City Hall, this is essentially taxpayer money–or at least you and I are paying for it in lost revenue to the city.
According to the city report presented Tuesday, by the end of December, STQ spent $2,039,000, or about 27 percent less than they had agreed to.
But, and I hate to use this phrase when talking about ships, this problem is apparently just the tip of the iceberg.
In addition to falling short on meeting their investment obligation, the audit points out that STQ hasn’t done a great job of sticking to the agreed upon capital improvement plan agreed to under the lease. In fact, auditors found that $815,000 of the just over $2 million spent by STQ so far was for improvements that exceeded cost limits or were excluded altogether in the capital improvement plan agreed to in the lease.
For example, STQ went over-budget on the kitchen equipment category by $325,741, including a $131,000 purchase of dishes, glassware and silverware. STQ also went over on the $52,500 budget line item for new mattresses, spending $119,000 over on this line item.
Auditors also found that within the just over $2 million spent by STQ were $68,400 in duplicate payments and overpayments to vendors.
For their part, STQ has promised to fulfill the terms of the agreement by the time the next audit is due at the end of this year.
However, it is worth pointing out that each previous operator of the Queen Mary, from City Hall itself to Disney to QSDI, have failed to make the Queen Mary into a long-term revenue generator. Each sunk millions into trying to make their visions–some good, some bad–come true. Now STQ has spent $43 million for the lease and promised to spend another $5.3 million to improve the vessel. None of these people seem to face the reality that the Queen Mary as an attraction sucks and by itself will always suck. It’s a one-time visit for almost everyone because year-in-year out, it’s still just an aging ocean liner.
At some point the city really needs to take an introspective and honest look at the Queen Mary.
Honestly, other than its service during WWII as a troop carrier and holding the Blue Riband for fastest Atlantic crossing several times, there is just not that much about the Queen Mary to distinguish it as historic–other than it is still around because Cunard Lines conned the city into saving it from the scrap heap where most of the other liners of her era ended up. Even when new in the 1930s, the Queen Mary was considered rather bland compared to rivals like the French liner Normandie, probably the most beautiful and luxurious ocean liner ever built.
Certainly it would be sad to see the Queen Mary towed away and headed for some scrap yard. But unless someone with some truly innovative ideas can come along, and it remains to be seen if STQ is that someone, at some point it would seem logical that the city would have to say enough is enough.
It’s great to have an icon, but when the icon is a high-maintenance money pit, perhaps it may be more fiscally wise to raise the anchor on the Queen Mary icon-era and look for a newer icon that more symbolizes Long Beach. And, heck if the city wants to stick with the money pit-theme, the Aquarium is always available as an icon. Or the new Pike. Or Long Beach Plaza. Or SeaFest. Or…