The Case for a Downtown Cruise Terminal

[spuwho]

After I recently completed a cruise to Alaska via Seattle. I was amazed at how much nurturing Seattle has done in bringing the Alaska cruise market to their waterfront.

What started in 1999 with 6 sailings and 6600 passengers, has now grown to 205 sailings, over 800,000 passengers served and now every boat brings about $2 million in local economy dollars through hotel nights and meals paid.

The Port says Seattle's cruise business generated $393 million in overall business revenue in 2011, brought in $17 million in state and local taxes, and provided 4,000 jobs.

They now split those 205 sailings over 2 piers, 69 and 91, where 91 has two slips.

This has created a new level of business development to the Alaskan Way/Elliott Street district. Once the harbinger of railroad spurs, large warehouses, grain elevators, from their ocean port days, this district is now being reborn with apartments, lofts, hotels, and a new service economy rising up around this new revenue stream.

Out of town tourism has risen every year since Seattle began to foster downtown cruise ports. Pedestrian traffic in and out 3 key spaces has risen as well.

1> Pike Place Market
2> Seattle Center
3> Downtown

Seattle which already has a strong urban residential presence is prime to supporting the new found tourism economy. Their downtown still maintains their traditional anchors (though rearranged in the retail consolidations) but also all of the new urban retail stores popular with the tourists. As my daughter noted, even the chain stores are different in that the product they carried was unique from what is carried in Florida.

Having lived in Seattle prior to the cruise "boom" I have (IMHO) a unique perspective on what impacts the industry has brought to the urban core.

So how do we apply what they have accomplished so well here in Jacksonville?  Do we or can we?

Clearly having cruise ships in such close proximity to your urban core has shown a lot of 'spill over' benefits. Hotel utilization. Improved restaurant tables served.  Walk through tourism. (or in Seattle's case monorail/streetcar mobility)

A thought occurred to me was the old Ford Assembly north of the Mathews Bridge. 2 slips to the north.  With a rail line right in front, you could build a nice heavy/light rail interface with the airport. Extend the Skyway for a cruise dock recirculator to downtown hotels and restaurants.

Thinking further is the Shipyards. If I were to take the Killashee project seriously, I could see a large interest in riding up the proposed tower by cruise visitors before or after.  Clearly the tourism traffic from the cruise docks to the Space Needle was significant in Seattle. The rotating restaurant was booked solid. I asked the manger what was driving his bookings, his answer, "everytime the cruise ships exchange boardings, I get get booked for a solid week".

Conversing further with the Marriott Waterfront property manager, he laughed at me when I asked him how his bookings were going. He said his biggest problem is getting the rooms turned over fast enough for the ingoing/outgoing cruise passengers. No complaints he said, it keeps his rooms booked solid throughout the prime cruise season.

I spoke with the employees of a popular Seattle tourism company that provides daily open air tours. They said "cruise season is work season...when the ships come in, we are booked".

Seattle has a natural deep water port. We don't. Seattle has no artificial obstructions, we do (Dames Point).  So there are some demerits in locating downtown. But I do think if we we do proceed with the new deep channel project we should make an effort to leverage it for commerce that has more urban benefit other than watching yet taller and taller container ships pass by.

Jacksonville has a very balanced economic platform. Enhancing the cruise experience is a complementary activity to the current improvements to shipping and sports that we fund today.

[Charles Hunter]

Unless you're talking about smaller ships - like the American Cruise Line that already docks at the Hyatt - I don't see how this can happen.
Dredging the river to 47' to TraPac (west side of Dames Point) will cost over $600 million - half of which must come locally (the state will probably pick up half that, leaving the City to come up with $150 million).  What would it cost to dredge another several miles to the Ford Plant?  And, as you said the Dames Point Bridge and the JEA power lines to the east of the bridge (similar height, I think) are an impediment. 

Tampa Bay is currently reviewing its options to keep their cruise business, with ships getting too tall to pass under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge - which is five feet taller than DPB at 180'.  First look at options includes building a new cruise terminal west of the Sunshine Skyway (and out of downtown Tampa) at $640 million; tear down the existing bridge and build a new one for $2 billion; or make the existing bridge taller for $1.5 billion.
Bridge article: http://www.bradenton.com/2014/07/03/5238121/study-offers-options-to-handle.html

And coming around the bend to the Shipyards involves two more bridges, which are 20 or so feet shorter than Dames Point.

American Cruise Lines: http://www.americancruiselines.com/cruises/southeast-us?gclid=CjwKEAjw0a2eBRDVrabv9vWJ90USJACsKRDHrNxxc03u5k2K50FyysZF3mBz9P-uNTL8kwGk3kIYqhoCQwHw_wcB

[GatorShane]

Why couldn't we just have a new terminal east of the DP bridge to accommodate the newer larger ships and use DT for smaller cruise lines that could fit under the bridges. A new terminal wouldn't even have to be built for the DT site. I don't see why the JPA doesn't explore the idea of attracting smaller cruise lines and make the DT site a port of call. I think the overnight dockings would help DT and there are plenty of things that could be included on day trip packages. You just need a staging area for transportation. You could also use river transportation for trips to the Zoo, Cummer, Landing, MOSH, .Timucuan Preserve, Ft. Caroline. Day trips could be arranged by land transport to St. Augustine, WGV,DT Fernandina, SJTC, Riverside, San Marco, Jax Beach etc.

[Charles Hunter]

Moving the cruise terminal east of the DPB and JEA is the answer, if Jax wants to stay in the "big time" cruise business.  They bought property in Mayport, at one time for a cruise terminal, but have now said they won't build there.  The east half of Blount Island is owned by the Marine Corps for their advance pre-positioning port.  With the exception of the BAE shipyard near Sisters Creek, pretty much all the rest of the riverbank is single family homes.  Could be done, but likely expensive and run into a lot of opposition.

[marty904]

JPA was already pitched with the idea of turning the old Ford plant into a cruise terminal and they shot it down. And I don't know about "A new terminal wouldn't even have to be built for the DT site". As someone who has worked at the Canaveral Port Authority, as a Maritime Security Coordinator, it would be impossible to operate a cruise line without a terminal.  While security has "loosened" a bit, Homeland Security still considers cruise to be a significant mass transit that falls under tight regulations, both from the federal level and the state level.

For the "port of call" idea... I don't know about that one either. While some of the destinations mentioned are great places, lots of cities have a museum, a zoo, a beach, etc. Typically to market a port for being a port of call, there has to be some "famous" or well-known destination such as Kennedy Space Center and (even) Ron Jon is nationally known.  St. Augustine is a good start and i think that there are other things in Jax that could be "port-of-call-worthy" but before you just throw a cruise line in the DT, the "destination" has to first be created and marketed.  If cruises could be aligned with NFL games at the stadium, that would be a unique destination but it is also limited to only those who are football fans and not necessarily the masses.

And, again in my experiences at Port Canaveral, with the uniqueness of their public access areas with all the restaurants and bars, it was a very unique challenge from a security standpoint so putting a cruise terminal in the middle of downtown would face similar security challenges as well.

[Ocklawaha]

It should also be noted that channel depth is not nearly the concern with cruise ships as is the air draft (height) of the ships.

Reportedly, a recent study by the State of Florida concluded that more than half the world's cruise ship fleet would be mega ships by 2016-17, which could cause a problem for Tampa with its 181-foot limitation. Miami and Fort Lauderdale having no bridges, this is not a problem for them. And although some states are raising bridges such as the Bayonne Bridge in New Jersey to accommodate the massive cargo ships of the future, Tampa's Skyway would have to be totally rebuilt, ruling that out as an option.

FYI, We may only have a 175 feet (53.34 m) of available air draft bu a cable-stayed bridge is the easiest of bridges to change the height on, each cable representing a panel of the bridge roughly equates to 'lego construction.'

We are still quite short on height, but at least that is fixable should we ever really go after the market. By comparison to Tampa's 181 feet, the maximum airdraft allowed under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in New York is 228 feet and under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco 220 feet.

The kicker for us in all of this is recent reports that ships featuring a draft of 28-50 feet, and an air draft of 200+ feet are ALL a Titanic in the making. These ships are top heavy and may not be safe in rough seas meaning it could be just a matter of time until the upper decks are eliminated; this regretfully done after 1,000 or so passengers drown.

There is another reason that cruise ships may not be getting much taller. To permit full transit through the Panama Canal the Bridge of the America's has a 201' clearance.  And for Alaska, ships leaving Vancouver need to pass under the Lion's Gate bridge, which has a 200' clearance.

Here are a couple of entire classes of ships that should have no trouble getting into DOWNTOWN.

MS 'Radiance of the Seas,' Class:

Class & type:   Radiance class cruise ship
Tonnage:   90,090 GT
Length:   293.2 m (962 ft)[4]
Beam:   39.8 m (131 ft)[5]
Draft:   8.5 m (28 ft)[6]
Decks:   12
Speed:   22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph)
Capacity:   2,501 passengers
Crew:   859

'Grandeur of The Sea's,' Class:

Class & type:   Vision-class cruise ship
Tonnage:   73,817 GT
44,122 NT
7,000 DWT
Length:   279 m (915 ft)
Beam:   32.2 m (106 ft) (waterline)
36 m (118 ft) (maximum)
Draught:   7.8 m (26 ft)
Depth:   15.85 m (52 ft)
Decks:   11
Installed power:   4 × MAN B&W 12V48/60
Propulsion:   Diesel-electric; two shafts
Fixed pitch propellers
Speed:   22 kn (41 km/h; 25 mph)
Capacity:   2,446 passengers
Crew:   760

[Charles Hunter]

Ock, a couple things
First, the Sunshine Skyway bridge is a cable-stayed bridge, with just one set of cables in the middle, not the two on the outside of Dames Point.  Yet it would still cost nearly as much to elevate it as build a new one. Although more of a hardship in Tampa Bay than here, it seems the bridge would have to be closed to car traffic during the 'raising' process.

What is the air draft of the two ship classes you listed?  The Hart has a little more than 140 feet.

[spuwho]

JPA was already pitched with the idea of turning the old Ford plant into a cruise terminal and they shot it down. And I don't know about "A new terminal wouldn't even have to be built for the DT site". As someone who has worked at the Canaveral Port Authority, as a Maritime Security Coordinator, it would be impossible to operate a cruise line without a terminal.  While security has "loosened" a bit, Homeland Security still considers cruise to be a significant mass transit that falls under tight regulations, both from the federal level and the state level.

For the "port of call" idea... I don't know about that one either. While some of the destinations mentioned are great places, lots of cities have a museum, a zoo, a beach, etc. Typically to market a port for being a port of call, there has to be some "famous" or well-known destination such as Kennedy Space Center and (even) Ron Jon is nationally known.  St. Augustine is a good start and i think that there are other things in Jax that could be "port-of-call-worthy" but before you just throw a cruise line in the DT, the "destination" has to first be created and marketed.  If cruises could be aligned with NFL games at the stadium, that would be a unique destination but it is also limited to only those who are football fans and not necessarily the masses.

And, again in my experiences at Port Canaveral, with the uniqueness of their public access areas with all the restaurants and bars, it was a very unique challenge from a security standpoint so putting a cruise terminal in the middle of downtown would face similar security challenges as well.

Do you know where/when that pitch was made to JPA?

I would like to see what the issues and concerns expressed were.

[spuwho]

I found this at the JIA site of all places.

Cruise business key for JaxPort future
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
By Carole Hawkins, Contributing Writer
jaxdailyrecord.com

Jacksonville's cruise ship industry at first glance might not seem impressive — a single ship populates its entire fleet. Still, cruise has maintained a foothold in the Jacksonville for 10 years, with no sign of drifting off into the sunset.

"We have consistently seen Jacksonville deliver for us," said Kirsten Sanchez, business development manager for Carnival Cruise lines, which operates Fascination out of the harbor. "This has been a fantastic port for us."

On Monday, as he celebrated the cruise industry's 10-year anniversary, Jacksonville Port Authority CEO Brian Taylor said he is pursuing ways to make the industry more vibrant.

"This could really be a growth industry for us if we can attract a number of players," he said. That means more ships. But would other cruise lines come here?

Jacksonville has been a good pick for Carnival because of its access to middle-America, Sanchez said. 

"Jacksonville has been a key part of that success," she said. "We attract a slightly different demographic here than we do in South Florida. It's more of a drive-in market, people who drive to the port rather than fly in."

The port draws seniors and families from North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and west to the Mississippi River, said Linda Moore, district manager of Intercruises, which runs emabarkation services in Jacksonville for Carnival. 

"Jacksonville is a great location. People don't have to drive another eight hours to get to South Florida," she said. "This ship hold 2,600 people and we're always full."

Jacksonville's cruise industry is small, but in some ways more important than the cruise business in larger markets, said Paul Astleford, CEO of Visit Jacksonville.

"Jacksonville's image as a destination has not been fully established nationally and internationally," he said. "Cruise is an important part of increasing our visibility."

The success of the cruise trickles to other businesses.

A Holiday Inn Express a mile and a half up the road from the terminal gets most of its customers just before and just after ships come to port, said Julianna Randolph, who manages the hotel's front desk.

At Jacksonville International Airport, cruise days create a visible and noticeable increase in traffic, said Debbie Jones, community relations manager for the Jacksonville Aviation Authority.

"I even let the airport's musicians know which days are cruise days, because those days are busier," she said.

JaxPort will soon release its growth strategy for the next 20 years, and Taylor has already stressed diversity as a key part of that strategy.

That means growing cruise.

But in Jacksonville, the industry faces challenges.

The port's cruise terminal lies on the inland side of the Dames Point Bridge. The bridge's height limits the size of cruise ships that can home port in Jacksonville. JaxPort is pursuing two strategies to get past the barrier, Taylor said.

First, market to several cruise operators that have ships small enough to use the current terminal.

And second, pursue long-term commitments from those operators, so the authority can invest in a new terminal at a different location.

"Cruise ships are headed the same direction as other vessels, they are getting bigger," Taylor said. "So we have some work to do. But, we do feel cruise can be a positive contributor to the future here at JaxPort."

[marty904]

JPA was already pitched with the idea of turning the old Ford plant into a cruise terminal and they shot it down. And I don't know about "A new terminal wouldn't even have to be built for the DT site". As someone who has worked at the Canaveral Port Authority, as a Maritime Security Coordinator, it would be impossible to operate a cruise line without a terminal.  While security has "loosened" a bit, Homeland Security still considers cruise to be a significant mass transit that falls under tight regulations, both from the federal level and the state level.

For the "port of call" idea... I don't know about that one either. While some of the destinations mentioned are great places, lots of cities have a museum, a zoo, a beach, etc. Typically to market a port for being a port of call, there has to be some "famous" or well-known destination such as Kennedy Space Center and (even) Ron Jon is nationally known.  St. Augustine is a good start and i think that there are other things in Jax that could be "port-of-call-worthy" but before you just throw a cruise line in the DT, the "destination" has to first be created and marketed.  If cruises could be aligned with NFL games at the stadium, that would be a unique destination but it is also limited to only those who are football fans and not necessarily the masses.

And, again in my experiences at Port Canaveral, with the uniqueness of their public access areas with all the restaurants and bars, it was a very unique challenge from a security standpoint so putting a cruise terminal in the middle of downtown would face similar security challenges as well.

Do you know where/when that pitch was made to JPA?

I would like to see what the issues and concerns expressed were.

I'll try to find it and post a link to it here for you. I read it just a few weeks ago.  There was a project where some students drafted various ideas of what to do with the Ford plant and one girl did a rendering of it as a cruise terminal and it was in that story that stated that JPA had already passed on buying it for that purpose.

[thelakelander]

Do you know where/when that pitch was made to JPA?

I would like to see what the issues and concerns expressed were.

Here you go. The height of the Dames Point was the main reason for Jaxport not considering the Ford plant...

The authority ultimately determined that the site would not be a viable cruise ship site because the terminal must accommodate large cruise ships, and so must be east of the Dames Point Bridge, which is not tall enough to allow passage of the large ships.
"It would only work for the very smallest of ships," Rubin said of the site. "And that is not the future of the business."

full article: http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2010/04/19/story11.html?page=all

[Ocklawaha]

Ock, a couple things
First, the Sunshine Skyway bridge is a cable-stayed bridge, with just one set of cables in the middle, not the two on the outside of Dames Point.  Yet it would still cost nearly as much to elevate it as build a new one. Although more of a hardship in Tampa Bay than here, it seems the bridge would have to be closed to car traffic during the 'raising' process.

What is the air draft of the two ship classes you listed?  The Hart has a little more than 140 feet.

Yes, I'm aware of the Sunshine Skyway bridge, my neighbor is a principal bridge engineer for Archer Western and we've had some long talks about the Dames Point. He is the one that has made the point several times that our bridge would be much easier to raise 10 to 20 feet. I don't know, though I doubt that the panels are such that one side at a time could be done, going from bent to bent, or in this case cable to cable, it probably runs all the way across. So yes it would have to shut down for a year or so and it would cost $$. We would have to consider the pay off in the event the port soars after the harbor deepening.

I don't recall the air draft but both of those classes of ships would easily fit under the Dames Point today, there are a bunch more too, but the Hart and Matthews would stop them and most of the others. There are however classes of ships much larger then the American Cruise Lines that currently uses downtown that could go under all three bridges.

[spuwho]

Do you know where/when that pitch was made to JPA?

I would like to see what the issues and concerns expressed were.

Here you go. The height of the Dames Point was the main reason for Jaxport not considering the Ford plant...

The authority ultimately determined that the site would not be a viable cruise ship site because the terminal must accommodate large cruise ships, and so must be east of the Dames Point Bridge, which is not tall enough to allow passage of the large ships.
"It would only work for the very smallest of ships," Rubin said of the site. "And that is not the future of the business."

full article: http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2010/04/19/story11.html?page=all

Thanks Marty and Lake for the reference, I was googling around but never found this.

It's a shame really. After seeing it work in Seattle, I could really see the benefits.

Granted, I don't think we could generate the frequency and volumes Seattle has reached after 15 years, but it could have been a great asset to East Jacksonville. I guess at this point it will be somewhere east of Blount. Not very sexy boarding next to a bunch of shipping containers and new car lots. It was fun thinking about it.

[spuwho]

Looking at Google Earth, I would surmise there are only 2 locations left for a reasonable cruise terminal with enough room for ships to navigate and still remain east of Dames Point.

Blount Island at Alligator Creek
Pine Island at Heritage River Road

[thelakelander]

Considering the Dames Point, the best spot for any economic spin-off potential was Mayport. Since they've decided to move on, I really don't expect much out of the cruise industry here.