Carnival Cruise Lines visits Freeport on a regular basis today but its cruise port is a small extension of the commercial ship port which is to say, not very appealing. People on vacations want to arrive at destinations with modern facilities that include shopping and activities and maybe some place nice to eat out, etc. In order to fix this, Carnival has been planning to build a modern cruise port on the south side of Grand Bahama island for at least 4-5 years now.
In May of this year, Carnival hosted a ground breaking ceremony at the site with the Bahamian government. A written overview is here and video bloviation can be watched here. The excruciating details can be found online here.
But the quick summary is that Carnival is about to begin building a $100mn state of the art cruise ship port which is much more than a simple terminal. The project will have a total spend of $170 mn over its 23 year expected life. It will have a jetty dock that can accommodate up to two massive cruise ships at a time. This facility, which is supposed to open in late 2024, will have retail outlets and restaurants. It will feature a 1.6 mile canal running parallel to the shore which they will apparently run electric boats up and down for the tourists. It will increase cruise ship traffic to the island by more than 1/2 million passengers per year over existing port arrangement. Carnival has several other ports like this in the Caribbean but the Grand Port is slated to be their "flagship port" for the region. The west end of this facility will be only about 3.9 miles east of the mouth of the Grand Lucayan waterway.
Here is an artist's conception from their environmental impact plan. The figure 8 at the upper right will be a nature trail sitting on 55 acres.
I visited near the site (just east of it) today, 2022-06-16, and so far I have seen no signs of work. No dredge barges, etc. That said, my location was about 3.5 miles to the east on the beach as I was having trouble finding the newly cut road that leads to the place. But I was close enough to see a barge if one was there.
I can say, however, that this development is going to include an absolutely beautiful natural sand beach with medium-fine sugar sand. It's really the perfect kind of sand for beach lovers. The beach is about 60' wide and gently slopes down into the ocean. Below is the view looking east from where I stood.
Below was the view looking west, toward the new development.
It will be interesting to see if a recession again interrupts this development as it interrupted the Ginn Sur Mer project over on the West End of the island back in 2008. The local prominent realtor is James Sarles who runs the Coldwell Banker operation in Freeport and he likes to say that Grand Bahama is always the bridesmaid and never the bride but he thinks it will be different this time given the number of different projects that are now under contract in the are. These BizUpdate labeled posts will attempt to provide boots on the ground updates for everything from Reunion Cay on West End through the relaunch of the Grand Lucayan Hotel and Marina, O2 resorts in Bell Channel Harbour, and the new Weller Development Group's 35 acre resort that is just west of the Grand Lucayan waterway.
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