The Queen Mary was deteriorating and at risk of capsizing when the city of Long Beach took it over in 2021. The ship's operator, Eagle Hospitality Trust, accrued more than $500 million in debt and filed for bankruptcy protection at the time.
The city considered scrapping it, but that proved more costly than restoring and repairing the ocean liner, according to Brandon Richardson with the Long Beach Business Journal.
Restorations continue
Those repairs gave the ship a new life in 2023. The Queen Mary began hosting tours, throwing special events, and concerts as well as welcoming guests as a hotel.
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The century-old ship operators said it grossed nearly $2.25 million in profits for 2023 after Long Beach spent more than $20 million restoring the Queen Mary to its former glory.
"The city actually closed out fiscal year '23 losing just over $7 million dollars in Queen Mary operations," Richardson said in an interview with LAist's daily news program AirTalk.
The city plans to continue restoring the Queen Mary. Sunday brunch returned last month, more rooms are opening and fine dining is expected to welcome back diners in the near future.
Mayor Rex Richardson said the city plans to build a temporary amphitheater — a precursor to a permanent venue — in the adjacent parking lot that can hold up to 10,000 people during his state of the city address last week.
A Long Beach icon
California’s urban centers like the Pike amusement park in West Long Beach saw its crowds disappear in the 1960s. Brian Chavez, a project specialist at the Historical Society of Long Beach, said the decline came from white Americans moving into the suburbs.
The movement caused city leaders to question the future of downtown Long Beach. Chavez said that led the city to purchase the Queen Mary for nearly $3.5 million in 1967 without considering the ship's condition or how much restoration would cost.
The city sent representatives from Long Beach fire and police departments to New York to inspect the ship during the sale.
"But many of the representatives that went from the city did not fully understand how to properly have a maritime structure become a land-based structure," Chavez said.
The city planned to spend $8 to $9 million to bring the ship to Southern California, but ended up paying nearly $40 million in repairs within the first year, Chavez said.
The ship’s arrival was big news for the city. Chavez said news from 1967 reported the celebration of Queen Mary's Long Beach arrival as equal to the end of World War II.
Since then, it's become a part of the Long Beach skyline. Chavez said the city won't use a bulldozer on the ship, which would be nearly impossible considering how sturdy it is in spite of its structural damage.
But Chavez said what could kill the Queen Mary is a lack of interest "by whoever is holding the lease, as well as the title to the ship, that will inevitably lead to its demise.”
