Posted on 08/14/2007 3:05:35 PM PDT by doctor noe
FURTHER UPDATE TO FLASH WITH ADDED INFO ON LB CITY HALL FINANCIAL OUTCOME: At 11:54 a.m. today in an auction in a packed U.S. Bankruptcy courtroom in downtown Los Angeles, Save the Queen, LLC was awarded the contractual rights previously held by QSDI, including development rights to nearly 50 acres of prime property surrounding the Queen Mary for $43 million...the amount of its initial overbid without the need to bid further. The outcome came after initial bidder O & S Holdings tried and failed to have the Court disqualify Save the Queen (on grounds it failed to strictly comply with bidding requirements).
After the Court rejected its motion, O & S declined to submit a counter-bid (minimum $500,000 increment higher) to counter Save the Queen. Following the court session, an O & S rep released a statement stating that it had "communicated to the City Council and the appropriate individuals within the City that we would not participate in the bidding process if Jeff Klein & Save the Queen were approved as a bidder." (Further on this coming).
[includes update] Under a Nov. 2006 agreement with the bankruptcy trustee (approved by the City Council), roughly $4.9 million of City Hall's debt [update] PLUS $3.4 million (totaling $8.3) for all rent outstanding through 2007 PLUS attorney and accountant fees was deemed a priority debt and will be paid in full when today's transaction closes (expected within 45 days).
An additional $4.1 million [a "transfer fee" in QSDI's lease and not always enforceable in bankruptcy court] was negotiated by the City to be a paid as subordinated general creditor debt...and will be paid from the amount remaining after paying another creditor ($25 million) plus attorney and accountant fees and other general creditors (the latter approx. $600,000).
Thus, LB city taxpayers will receive all rent (thru Dec. 31/05, $4.9 million) PLUS all 06 rent PLUS all 07 rent (paid early) totaling $8.3 million...plus some portion (currently unknown) of the $4.1 million which City Hall acknowledges was subject to some dispute but was negotiated as part of the bankruptcy outcome.
LB City Attorney Bob Shannon was in the courtroom and LBReport.com has comments from him...including information of which we weren't aware previously. We also have comments from former QSDI chief Joseph Prevratil...whose non-profit RMS Foundation (subtenant running the Queen Mary's day to day operations) will technically become Save the Queen's subtenant pending the conclusion of an agreement (not yet finalized) with Save the Queen. All of this and more in coverage coming on LBReport.com.
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Thank you. That was my mistake and because there was no title, I missed the article in red print on the home page.
There is ongoing discussion about the possibility of turning the QM into a Vegas-style casino. Not sure that will happen since there are many variables and obstacles. As long as it would be upscale, it just might be a good idea.
Just as well when they hit bad weather...
I live in Long Beach, and I have a friend who works on the Queen Mary, and that ship is in bad, bad shape. In some spots, the only thing keeping the water out are layers and layers of marine paint. When an elevator or escalator breaks, they just put up a velvet rope, and it just rots there.
If someone wanted to build a casino there, all they would have to do would be to completely tear it apart and start over again, because it is a death trap. Just a big rusting piece of junk. I’m sorry to say that because I have fond memories of walking the decks when I was a boy— but that was decades ago! Sitting in salt water for years is not an easy thing to brush off. Especially when you’re bankrupt
The QM has been operated for a number of years as, IIRC, a tourist attraction of variegated format; then a hotel, semi-successfully; but it always seems to go back into bankruptcy every few years. You’d think it would be more than adaptable to a number of “amusement” applications, but for whatever reason it never makes it for long. It may have something to do with cruises aboard almost-equivalent-luxury ships being fairly common (and cheap) and the idea that the restaurant spaces aboard the ship are probably quite obsolete and can’t be economically made to conform to current fire codes, or the hallways are too narrow for current codes, or maybe, even just sitting at the parking spot Long Beach has for it (it’s not a “dock”, it’s a sort of lagoon surrounded by rip-rap boulders) it leaks enough oil so that constant cleanup is required....I frankly don’t know. But nobody (even Disney for several years) has been able to make it economically viable.
I’m sure you’re right wrt the general maintenance level and structural condition. I’d have to bet that another big stumbling block is simply the cost of guest insurance: how many things like rails and pipes and rivet heads and davits there are to trip and fall over or crunch your head on. A ship operating at sea falls under a completely different set of laws than a land based hotel, and the insurers probably jacked the rates to the moon since it doesn’t fall into any convenient category. And even when the thing was going pretty well, I don’t think it consistently attracted too many patrons. Sadly, it’s most likley destined for the scrapper before too long.
I bet it was. The QM carried over 15,000 troops at a time, at a cruising speed of 28.5 knots. Pretty impressive.
I stayed on the hotel Queen Mary several times while on business trips. It was like going back in time - glad I had the experience.
MSTS troop ships did half that speed.
Just tow the great lady Queen Mary out to sea and give her a decent burial. Like the USS Maine and HMS Invincible.
That would be a more dignified ending than the scrapyard.
Titanic and her sister Britannic met a tragic end. Their sister Olympic survived only to be broken up for scrap during the Great Depression.
BTW, the great liner SS United States, once America’s pride, lies rusting and derelict in Newport News, VA. She also deserves a merciful burial at sea.
Hear, hear!
Last thing I'd want to see is her getting cut up, melted down, rolled, and drop-hammered into a lot full of Priuses.
No; she's berthed Pier 92 in Philadelphia ^. Can be seen from I-95, and is in piss-poor shape. There are some folks trying to save her, but it will take a lot of money and time.
I made 6 crossings of the Pacific as a youngster in the 1950s but on nothing as nice as the SS United States. My crossings were on the curious and little know US Army’s navy, called Military Sea Transportation Service. Military dependents were in staterooms in the middle and troops were on the fantail and bow sections. Seattle to Yokohama was 14 days at sea.
Re: SS United States
Last time I read about her was in the Washington Times in 1983, she was then in Virginia ports somewhere. Even then she was described as a rustbucket constantly changing hands.
Too bad for a once-great lady. But I have read for years that the maximum serviceable age for twentieth-century ocean liners is about thirty years. I know, my wife and I spent our honeymoon that same year on a lovely liner that was a contemporary of the tragic Andrea Doria, and bore an uncanny resemblance. But at least we felt like we were on board a real ship, and not just a floating casino.
And, off in the distance from Nassau, Bahamas, we saw the SS Norway, formerly the SS France. Google that ship’s ignominious fate.
In 1965 or so my family transited from Germany, Bremerhaven? to NYC it toook a loooog time over 2 weeks IIRC
as far as I could find out a few years back the ship we were on, the USS Darby is still swinging around on a hook in the reserve fleet scheduled for scrapping.
r
From my Dad's memoirs of WWII
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