Firm offers $41 million to buy Queen Mary lease
A Santa Monica shopping center developer has bid $41 million to purchase the lease for the Queen Mary and surrounding grounds in Long Beach, with plans to refurbish the ship and develop the landing as a retail-entertainment complex.
O&S; Holdings’ is the first bid received for taking over the property operated by Queen’s Seaport Development Inc., which filed for bankruptcy in March 2005. Court-appointed bankruptcy trustee Howard Ehrenberg said several other developers have been considering the property and could submit bids before an offer is selected this summer.
But those developers would have to bid at least $2.5 million more than O&S; and meet several other criteria to be selected. O&S; bid the minimum $41 million, the amount necessary to pay off Queen’s Seaport’s lenders and other creditors.
Ehrenberg said the 66-year lease, which has 58 years remaining on it, has been conservatively appraised at $56 million.
Rachel Forman, O&S; Holdings’ vice president of corporate marketing, said preliminary plans for the area include refurbishing and developing a “retail and entertainment, tourist-driven development.”
The adjacent property now includes a welcoming terminal for Carnival Cruise Lines and a number of smaller businesses and shops. Ehrenberg said the parking area could be developed to add more entertainment, dining, specialty retail, hotel and meeting space. “It’s envisioned as a capstone for the city of Long Beach, to tie the waterfront” to the rest of the city, Ehrenberg said.
O&S; has developed 80 other shopping centers and community centers around the U.S.
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