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.
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.
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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.
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.
Long Beach owns the ship but has leased it to operators. Now a bankruptcy hearing could leave the city on the hook for operating expenses and millions in repairs.
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.
