The expansion of the cruise ship pier is seen as necessary to boosting cruise arrivals in the Territory. Photo: VINO

“The technical details will come out a bit later but there is an idea, the pier is 44- 45 ft wide at this time and it would need to be at least 65 ft wide to accommodate the ships that have wider decks. The lengthening will be somewhere between 200 and 300 ft. The Environmental Impact Study (EIS) will give us a better appreciation of how we could move in this direction which we are going to be commissioning very shortly,” Minister for Communications and Works Mark Vanterpool said at the signing of the Heads of Understanding between Government and Tortola Port Partners on Tuesday March 27, 2012.

The extension of the pier is seen as critical for the VI cruise industry to remain competitive and at a public meeting on March 20, 2012 at the Noel Lloyd Positive Action Movement Park had reported that the 2011-2013 season shows that cruise arrivals to the territory will be down from this year.

“Projections indicate that a major reason for this downturn is that we must extend our cruise ship dock to facilitate the luxury liners that prefer to call on destinations such as ours. We are currently in discussions with all major cruise lines and hope that we will be able to improve our numbers for the 2014 season and beyond, once we are able to complete the much needed expansion,” Hon. Vanterpool noted.

The expansion of the pier is expected to be completed by December 2012 while further development of the land side and improvements to Road Town will be pursued over the next three years.

An important step to the realisation of this project was made with the signing of the Heads of Understanding (HoU) between the Government of the Virgin Islands and Tortola Port Partners Limited and was developed as a working Memorandum which sets out preliminary understandings between the Government and Tortola Port Partners Limited. Deliberations will begin immediately and continue up to a period of 90 days during which time, according to Premier Dr. D. Orlando Smith, Government will attempt to secure a formal agreement on terms that are mutually beneficial.

Premier Smith further said Government received proposals from three different companies and following the initial review determined to further advance their discussion with the Tortola Port Partners Limited, in collaboration with the British Virgin Islands Ports Authority. “As a Government in previous years we made efforts to develop the land side of the cruise ship dock but those efforts were discontinued. So in this light and in furthering the responsible development of the cruise industry, Government is pleased to announce that it will begin discussions with Tortola Ports Partners Limited for the development of the Road Town Cruise pier and other land side amenities….This Heads of Understanding will be the platform on which both parties would be able, in confidence, to negotiate a possible binding agreement to take the impending cruise pier development forward. Both parties will now work closely and exclusively as far as is commercially reasonable to finalise this negotiation.”

Tortola Port Partners Limited is a joint venture of the Jay Cashman Group and the United Infrastructure Group (UIG) with the participating cruise line being Disney.

Regarding the planned improvements to Road Town, which will be pursued over the next three years, Minister Vanterpool said all parties involved were of the view that focus should not only be on the port without consideration for areas around the port, which is the Road Town capital. “So we are going to be addressing issues like sidewalks, connectivity, road crossings, Main Street and its significance to the Territory and a number of other things like that. It’s all in conjunction with the development and its going to be over a period of time but we want to make sure that the entire port in Road Town as well as the wider Road Town is developed to a high standard. This is important as we move forward in this direction.”