Queen Mary’s Fate Awaits Cost Study

Miguel Olmedo, a cook on the Queen Mary, sat quietly in the back of the City Council chambers Tuesday while a union representative presented city leaders with a petition asking them to save the old ocean liner--and Olmedo’s job.

Olmedo wavered between optimism and despair: One moment he expressed hope that the landmark tourist attraction will be spared. The next minute he predicted that he and the 1,100 other Queen Mary workers will be out of a job by the end of the year.

“I assume it will be closed. Everybody will be in unemployment lines,” said Olmedo, one of about 25 Queen Mary employees who attended the council meeting.

Long Beach officials insist the fate of the ocean liner is not yet decided. “If there’s a realistic opportunity to save (it), to maintain the Queen in some rational way, we will do that,” Councilman Evan Anderson Braude assured the audience.

But recent estimates that it may cost the city’s Harbor Department $1 million to $2 million a month to keep the city-owned attraction open indicated that the floating hotel’s days may be numbered.

The figures came from the Walt Disney Co., which is dropping its lease on the ship and the adjacent Spruce Goose attraction at the end of September.

Before local officials can decide the liner’s future, they say they need to confirm the operating costs and get advice from consultants. Three teams of consultants are being interviewed this week, and Harbor Planning Director Geraldine Knatz said that one will likely be selected by Friday to conduct an economic analysis of the Queen Mary and the Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes’ “Flying Boat.”