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The Tampa Port Authority is having to plan now
for a future when cruise ships may be too tall to fit under the Sunshine Skyway,
and may stop coming to Tampa.
To save the local cruise ship industry, Tampa Bay has to choose
between two of the biggest and most expensive public infrastructure projects in
its history.
One proposal is to spend $2 billion to replace or raise the Sunshine Skyway
bridge so that it would be tall enough to allow new mega-sized cruise ships to
pass underneath it. Those ships are the future of the cruise industry, but they
cannot sail under the current bridge.
The other option is to build a $700 million cruise ship port on the Pinellas
County side of the Skyway so that the ships would not have to go under the
bridge at all.
When the Tampa Bay Times asked local officials about the two options, one
immediately came off the table:
"Obviously, I don't think replacing the bridge is a wise decision," said
Pinellas County Commission Chairwoman Karen Seel.
Neither does St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman.
"Mayor Kriseman thinks the only viable option would be a terminal on the west
side of the Skyway," communications director Benjamin Kirby wrote in an email.
The state study released last week revealed scant details about either option,
especially about the Pinellas cruise port. Where would it be built and how? What
about the environmental impact on Pinellas' world-famous beaches?
The public and the politicians will need to know all that before deciding what
to do next. But those answers will have to wait for the next study.
"Of course, I'm concerned about our beaches and I'm concerned about our
environment," Seel said. "But it's too preliminary to make a decision about
what's feasible and what's not." |
