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One of the most pathetic sights in St. George’s is watching herds of cruise ship passengers flopping their way over the hill to wallow like tight-packed hippos in Tobacco Bay.

Then it’s back to the buffet line and on-board slot machines. The ship pulls out, leaving merchants to count their T-shirt earnings, and the town calculates its meagre income from sewage pumping and dock fees.

This is no way to make a living, not for a place like St. George’s, not for an official World Heritage Site with the most beautiful and historic streets and buildings in all of Bermuda.

St. George’s can do better than this — and it needs to, if the town and its citizens want to pay their way in high-cost, up-market Bermuda.

The good news is that the ‘Olde Towne’ is finally being forced to make hard decisions about the future it wants for itself.

It is almost certain that, within three years, cruise ships on the Bermuda route will be too large to fit through the entrance of St. George’s Harbour.

That leaves the town with the choice of spending huge sums to widen Town Cut — or trying to carve out some other kind of future for itself.

Right now, the town is musing over a new vision for its waterfront, being passed around in the form of a preliminary architect’s impression of what the place could become.

It has new marinas at each end of Ordnance Island for visitors and locals. The south side of the island — now used as a cruise ship berth — becomes a place for visiting luxury yachts to moor stern-to the shore.

The two scruffy parking lots at each end of town — Tiger Bay, which is now used mostly for gravel and boulder unloading, and the municipal parking lot — are turned into ‘mixed use’ areas, with things like parks, inns, single-level condos, restaurants and a small hotel.

St. George’s Mayor E. Michael Jones stresses that this is a very preliminary version. There will be a town meeting at the beginning of next year for citizens to ask questions and put forward their own ideas and suggestions.

By that time, St. George’s should have more information on exactly how much Town Cut would need to be widened for the newer, bigger cruise ships — and how much that is likely to cost.

Already, though, there are a lot of things about this plan that make good sense.

Local and visiting boat owners, and visiting yacht crews, are likely to spend more money on a wider variety of things in St. George’s than cruise passengers.

They won’t equal the thousands upon thousands of cruise passengers, but they’ll buy more than the occasional T-shirt. They’ll use restaurants and bars, and buy much more pricey items. They’ll need to get things repaired.

They will enhance the appearance of the waterfront, help to make it lively and colourful place. They won’t block the views of the water, like the cruise ships do.

They’ll tend to make St. George’s a more interesting and attractive place for other people to visit. Locals and tourists staying in hotels will want to come to see the boats, rather than stay away to avoid the throngs of cruise passengers.

For that reason, it is likely to attract additional investment, from additional people with additional ideas for making St. George’s a vibrant town instead of a cruise ship pit-stop.

Perhaps most importantly, it is completely do-able.

The Corporation of St. George’s already owns all the land involved. And each of the elements in the project — the marinas, inns, condos — ought to be able to pay their own way. St. George’s should not need to go to Central Government, or anybody else, to beg for money to make it happen.

What’s more, the plan doesn’t require huge excavation, dynamiting and environmental destruction.

The plan – at least the architect’s preliminary rendition so far — does include a possible berth at Pennos Wharf for one large new cruise ship — if St. George’s does decide it’s worth blasting through a wider entrance to the harbour.

The Town of St. George’s would be wise to resist this temptation.

It would water down the exciting vision the new plan offers, while offering very little in return. The new larger cruise ships are called ‘Panamax’ ships, because they are built to the absolute maximum size the Panama Canal can handle.

They can carry up to 2,500 passengers (compared to around 1,600 aboard ships like the Zenith and Norwegian Majesty), and are around 950 feet long as oppose to 650 feet.

They can make their own fresh water, treat their own sewage, travel at much faster speeds, and require fewer crew.

That means the single Panamax ship that could dock in St. George’s would have far fewer passengers and crew than the two smaller liners that visit the old town now.

Merchants would sell fewer T-shirts and beers. St. George’s would make less money from dock fees from a single Panamax ship, and no money from pumping sewage.

Worse yet, St. George’s could spend a fortune to blast a wider entrance to its harbour for Panamax ships… and then find that cruise lines start building even bigger ships, that won’t fit the new wider entrance.

Panama is already under huge pressure to expand the canal to make room for large, modern ships. A “third lane” for larger ships could be completed in around 10 years if financing is found.

Chasing after cruise passengers is a losing proposition for St. George’s, no matter how you look at it. It’s never provided a great living for the town.

Now its prospects look more dismal than ever. There is, however, another choice. St. George’s should take it.[[In-content Ad]]

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