Cruise ship visit highlights city's need for waterfront hotel

The surprise arrival yesterday of the Seabourn Pride - a day ahead of schedule - gave 208 of the world's best-heeled travelers a taste of Gloucester, but only teased the city with a whiff of the largesse that could be had if it had a waterfront hotel.

The once high hopes of that have dimmed.

With Gloucester as its transfer port for autumn tours - Seabourn Pride is stopping here again later this month - guests staying in the ship's luxury suites for the most part will be passing through Gloucester on their way to and from Boston hotels near Logan Airport.

In this, the cruise line's business plan for the port is very different from the routine employed by the Holland America Line, whose full-size cruise ship Amsterdam has been here twice this month and will be back again Sunday.

The more than 1,000 passengers touring on the Amsterdam get a day to visit this and other ports of call on its trips along the coast of New England and the Canadian Maritimes, allowing them to eat and shop to the delight of local merchants.

But Seabourn uses Gloucester as a transfer port. "It is close enough to Boston's airport to ease arrivals and departures, yet more tranquil and atmospheric than its citified neighbor" of Boston, Seabourn notes.

Seabourn guests may decide to linger here, said Bruce Good, the line's public relations director, but most arrive and depart by chartered bus from the Rowe's Wharf dock where Frank Elliott's Cruiseport Gloucester Marine Terminal is under construction and slated to open next spring.

Seabourn's guests are world travelers. They will fly to homes across the country and other continents. The ship that stopped here yesterday began its transatlantic journey 14 days ago in Plymouth, England, following what Seabourn calls the "Path of the Pilgrim Fathers." Its scheduled stop in Plymouth, Mass., was scratched yesterday and explains why the Seabourn Pride got here a day early.

"These are pretty experienced travelers," Good said.

Seabourn booked 34 of its guests into Boston's Seaport Hotel and Ritz Carlton, but Good said others, using their own travel agents, undoubtedly booked other Boston hotels - for stays before and after the transfers in Gloucester.

At rates starting at $300, 100 rented hotel rooms, a conservative number, multiplies to about $30,000 in hotel bookings in Boston each time the Seabourn Pride lowers its gangplank in Gloucester - not counting spending on taxis, purchases and restaurants while unpacked.

"If you had a (hotel)," Good said, "we could hold them in Gloucester."

Good said the qualities of the port that make it a desirable transfer destination would appeal to passengers who want a place to stay before and after their cruises.

He recalled Seabourn President Deborah Natansohn's way of placing Gloucester in the mind of travel agents. "When she said, 'This is where George Clooney made the movie ("The Perfect Storm")' - that's when the light goes on," he said.

Gloucester is assured of becoming a much busier cruise port, Good said, noting the fast growth of the trend toward smaller ships. Seabourn Pride, which the company describes as a yacht, draws only 16.5 feet so it can avail itself of the Gloucester cruiseport facility on the inner harbor.

He noted two similar-sized cruise ships recently were commissioned by a competitor for use in trips along the New England and Canadian coasts.

Richard Armstrong, director of the Massachusetts Seaport Council which funds development of the state's ports, has organized a business development campaign, named "Historic Ports of Massachusetts," to bring smaller ships into Salem, New Bedford, Fall River and Gloucester, leaving Boston to the superships.

Armstrong said he expects cruise traffic in all the provincial ports to grow "exponentially in the next five years.

"We're very excited," he said.

But without a harbor-front hotel, much of the economic potential will be lost.

And negotiations by a team of prominent Boston hotel builders to buy the one site on the waterfront where a hotel is allowed under state rules have broken down.

Frank Keefe and Terry Guiney, who built the Hotel Commonwealth and helped spark the revitalization of Boston's Kenmore Square, said yesterday they have been unable to come to terms with Peter Maggio. Maggio offered them the Commercial Street property where once Bird's Eye and more recently Good Harbor Fillet ran fish processing facilities.

It was this property Mayor John Bell had in mind when, at his third inaugural last January, he said he was "working hard to encourage a fine, full service, quality hotel in our city."

Only recently, developer Sam Park announced he hoped to add a business hotel to the array of shops around a department store in the pending 188,000-square-foot shopping center now making its way through state and local permitting.

But Park acknowledges the hotel he has in mind would not serve the same market as the waterfront hotel Keefe and Guiney were pursuing.

Maggio's property was especially desirable because it lies on the west side of Commercial Street, outside the boundary of the state's designated port area, in which hotels, residences and recreational boating facilities are barred.

The designated port encompasses Commercial Street's east-side wharves and piers, along with the rest of the waterfront except for the inside half of Smith Cove in East Gloucester.

A pending rewrite of the Harbor Plan, which defines uses and a related rezoning, does nothing to ease the restriction.

"We tried to get some of the rules changed," said retired City Councilor Abdullah Khambaty, who was the city's lead representative on the Harbor Plan Committee. But he said "no hotel" remains the state mandate.

Attorney James McKenna, Bell's former administrative assistant, said it will take a special act of the Massachusetts Legislature to loosen the rules to allow a hotel on the waterfront.

"We have excess capacity on the waterfront," McKenna said. "We need a working waterfront that really works. Harbor Loop to the Fort should be opened for business."

Within that sector lies the vacant two acres known as I-4 and C-2. The parcel was acquired by Boston developer Jeffrey Cohen in 1984, but the same rules that bar hotels frustrated his hopes of putting the property to commercial use.

The mayor has tried to interest a number of entrepreneurs in a variety of ventures, including a hotel, on Cohen's property, but all have backed away from the tight controls on development.

Guiney and Keefe have different views about the viability of a waterfront hotel in Gloucester, but both men and Bell cite the state's restrictions within the designated port as high hurdles.

"I at least decided not to spend any more time on it," said Guiney, but he also described himself as the harder-headed of the partners. "Frank's the urbanologist, city planner and visionary," Guiney said.

Keefe, who as Lowell city manager orchestrated a revitalization of the old mill city in the 1980s that earned international notice, said he sees a similar potential for Gloucester.

"It's a spectacular destination," said Keefe, but he added that a waterfront hotel fits only in a larger "complex plan for the downtown and the waterfront."

A waterfront hotel, McKenna argued, would one-up the build-it-and-they-will-come adage. "Build it and they will come and stay and more will come," he said.

No place to stay

* What's happening: Seabourn Pride was here yesterday, back twice more this month.

* Bringing: 200 guests departing and 200 more coming each visit, most from and to Boston hotels before and after their cruises.

* Worth: More than $30,000 a trip in hotel bookings alone

* Why not here? No waterfront hotel

* Why not? State won't allow waterfront hotels, not considered a marine industrial use.

* Needed: Special act of Legislature

* Thoughts: "We tried to get some of the rules changed." - Abdullah Khambaty

"Gloucester is a spectacular destination." - hotel developer Frank Keefe

"Build it and they will stay and more will come." - attorney James McKenna

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