Despite warning signs, city officials entrusted the historic ship’s future to a firm that wasn’t up to the job. Now millions of dollars in public money will be needed to clean up the mess.
The Queen Mary is expected to remain closed into 2022 as the city works on urgent repairs.
The move is the next step as the city considers the Queen Mary’s future and how to fund millions of dollars in critical repairs for the historic ocean liner.
The judge said they showed a “willingness to flaunt the law, use entities and transfers to avoid paying money wrongfully obtained, and a lack of remorse for so doing.”
The first ship to sail from Long Beach will be the Panorama, a 4,008-passenger vessel set to depart on a seven-day cruise down the Mexican Riviera.
A little-known real estate investment firm had big plans for the Queen Mary, but now they owe hundreds of millions to an array of creditors—and the fate of the city’s most famous asset is more uncertain than ever.
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.
There are plenty of ideas that have come and gone between the whale and the ship. Part of Long Beach’s rich history is our propensity for welcoming into town every ragtag traveling salesman waving around a new cockamamie idea to lure mobs of tourists to town.
The Long Beach Harbor Commission is expected to vote later this year on whether to take control of the historic Queen Mary.
