Experts: Mega-Berth Needed ; Maritime Cities Should Be Ready to Handle a Wave of Bigger Cruise Ships, Industry Analysts Say.

By TOM BELL Staff Writer

Portland needs to find a way to accommodate the next generation of enormous cruise ships, just as many other ports are doing, according to some industry experts.

“Any maritime city that wants to be a player in the future growth of the industry has got to be able to handle these very large ships,” said Philip Crannell, president of Ports and Marine Group International, a Florida firm that designs and develops cruise ship terminals around the world. “In North America, everybody is getting ready for the big ships.”

Others say there will always be a market for small- and medium- size ships, and that the public’s current infatuation with huge ships may be a passing fad. They argue that the focus should be on building infrastructure that can be expanded if the big ships come to dominate the industry.

“Maybe the 1,200-foot-long ship is an experiment that fails after a while,” said Todd Nottingham, who has designed many of the cruise ship terminals in Alaska.

ISSUE HITS PORTLAND

The question of how to handle large cruise ships has become a central issue in the Portland City Council’s discussion of how to redevelop the Maine State Pier.

But much of the recent discussion has focused on the timing of a councilor’s decision to raise the “mega-berth” concept and its implications for the pier, rather than on the importance of docking facilities themselves.

Cruise ships currently dock at the 1,000-foot pier, which needs about $15 million in structural repairs over the next 20 years. Two developers, Ocean Properties of Portsmouth, N.H., and the Olympia Cos. of Portland, have submitted bids to develop and upgrade the 85- year-old pier so it can absorb the heavy stresses produced when cruise ships dock there.

The council is now divided over which team should win the right to developer the pier. Councilor Ed Suslovic, who holds the swing vote, is using his position to lobby for adding a mega-berth to the project and getting the developers to pay for it.

The mega-berth is a proposed floating dock system that would be anchored on piles and could accommodate ships up to 1,400 feet long.

The berth originally was part of the nearby Ocean Gateway project, but is not being built because its $6 million price tag was more than the original estimate and not enough money was available. City officials have been seeking federal money for the project but have come up empty.

The increasing size of cruise ships is driving the issue. Over the past two decades, the average ship size has been increasing at the rate of roughly 90 feet every five years, according to a survey done for the city by a consultant.

The 1,020-foot long Explorer of the Seas, which was tied up at the Maine State Pier last week, is about the largest ship that can fit at the pier, city officials say.

BIGGER SHIPS ON THE HORIZON

Royal Caribbean is building Genesis class ships that will be almost 1,200 feet long. The $1.2 billion ships are destined for the Caribbean winter market and could potentially visit New England in the summer and fall.

The average ship entering the market from 2008 to 2011 will be more than 1,050 feet long and will weigh more than 130,000 tons, according to the study. Three cruise lines that call on Portland – Royal Caribbean, Carnival and Celebrity – are participating in the trend.

Celebrity is building three ships that will be 1,033 feet long. Carnival is building three ships, two of which will probably be longer than 1,000 feet.

Ships can anchor in the harbor and use tenders to transport passengers to shore, and that’s what happened in 2005 when the 1,132- foot-long Queen Mary 2 last visited Portland. But cruise ship lines don’t want to tender passengers, said Andrew Poulton, director of strategic marketing for Regent Seven Seas Cruises

“It is messy and time-consuming and denigrates the guest experience,” he said.

Bar Harbor relies on tenders. But that port is in an ideal location for cruise ship itineraries, Poulton said. Portland’s location is much less attractive because it’s too close to Boston and too far from Halifax, he said. A tendering operation would be viewed by the cruise lines as a major drawback.

Portland’s other competitors in the region, Boston and the Canadian cities St. John, Halifax and Sydney, all have large berths that can handle the new mega-ships.

In Alaska and British Columbia, where the ports are faced with tidal ranges of greater than 20 feet, ports have built berths similar to the mega-berth proposed for Portland. Cruise line and port officials in Alaska and British Columbia say the system works well, and some floating docks are big enough to allow trucks to travel on them.

The berths are like barges that go up and down with the tide, allowing for consistent height relative to the ships, said John Stone, port director in Juneau, Alaska. Juneau plans to replace two of its three fixed docks with floating berths.

“Based on what the operators say, it’s preferred to have a floating berth,” he said.

QUESTIONS OF FUNCTIONALITY

PND Engineers, the Seattle company that designed Juneau’s floating berth, also designed the mega-berth for Portland. That berth would be a 1,000-foot-long structure supported by pilings and three-piling clusters called “dolphins,” two of which were installed years ago to hold the Bath Iron Works dry dock. At the center of the berth there would be one floating dock, 124 feet long and 45 feet wide.

The rest of the structure would be a series of catwalks that would allow workers to reach mooring platforms and handle lines.

Critics say the dock wouldn’t be able support an ambulance or delivery trucks, but Barry Sheff, project manager for Ocean Gateway, said the city could build a dock that supports trucks. It’s just a matter of money and priorities, he said.

Sheff, who works for Woodard & Curran, is also a consultant for the Olympia Cos.

BUILDING IN STAGES

Suslovic first began talking about the mega-berth this summer and said he raised the issue late in the process because he did not realize until recently that planning for the pier and the mega- berth should be done at the same time.

Nottingham, the Alaska terminal designer, said it’s crucial that a port develop a long-range plan. “You don’t have to build it all right now,” he said. “You can build it in stages. But you have to have a plan for how it will happen.”

The Portland City Council has asked the two developers to consider adding a mega-berth to their proposals. The council will meet with the developers Monday at 7 p.m.

Staff Writer Tom Bell can be contacted at 791-6369 or at:

tbell@pressherald.com

(c) 2007 Portland Press Herald. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.