Milwaukee Faces Cruise Ship Arms Race
Will new dock secure success for Port Milwaukee? Or will Chicago and Duluth steal the business?
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Will new dock secure success for Port Milwaukee? Or will Chicago and Duluth steal the business? Back to the full article.
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Categories: Weekly
There may be a lot I don’t understand about this situation but I do know Milwaukee can’t compete with Navy Pier.
And, according to a 5/10 article in the Duluth News Tribune, “The [Duluth] cruise ship passenger terminal on the Harbor Drive side of the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center will be completed later [in May], just in time for the first cruise ship since 2013 to dock in Duluth’s harbor.” The new terminal was opened to coincide with the Cruise the Great Lakes annual meeting which was being held at the DECC in early May.
Wow. Envious yet?
My thinking is that if dredging Pier Wisconsin to accommodate these bigger ships will cost $30 million (3-4x the current “Shangri-la” plan cost of $7.2 million) then someone should go out and find the money. I’m serious. Is Milwaukee committed to building its tourism industry or is it satisfied losing this business to others because it’s going to piddle around trying to pimp out a windswept landfill.
Hello, people…make no small plans.
Would other stops in the Great Lakes mean not stopping here? We have a city to be proud of with many attractions during the cruise season. This is only an “all or nothing” situation if we do nothing.
I have it interesting that funding for a number of infrastructure has come from the American Recuse Act from which the Governor has discretion on how the funds could be used. Republicans can commit over a billion dollars in tax money for a boondoggle like Foxconn and deliberately not fund local projects which make sense and have the support of the people.
It has seemed to me for more than 12 yrs or so, that the repubs really, REALLY want to starve MKE of money for literally anything….education? cut state support; police?, cut state support; infrastructure? cut state supprt.
Not clear why they want to destroy the biggest city in the state, but that certainly seems to be their goal.
They really never cared whether Foxconn was viable. If they had, they would have done due diligence on the proposal and they did not. They should be ashamed and embarrassed. The only remaining question is if any of the leaders of that giant con approval was paid off by Foxconn. We’ll probably never know. for sure.
I say improve the port. We could make a great stop on the way. Some really great travel memories come from the smallest or less famous places.
The so-called South Shore Cruise Dock is a distinctly bad idea. It would be a gateway located far from any attractions and a really challenging drop-off place for cruise passengers attempting to visit our city. It would be absolutely uncompetitive with other ports-of-call vying for Great Lakes cruise business.
We need to locate our cruise terminal downtown to take advantage of the best we have to offer – our awesome visuals, readily available sightseeing, and visitor-friendly walk-around opportunities. This could be a very good piece of business for Milwaukee. Let’s do our best thinking!