Queen Mary Ship

Long Beach officials on Tuesday narrowed down the list of proposals for the Queen Mary to six--one to operate the ocean liner where it is now moored and five to buy the vessel and move it out of the city. The Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners rejected 12 proposals to buy or operate the ship because they were not accompanied with a $100,000 bond, a requirement imposed by harbor officials to weed out spurious offers.

Waving big dollars at cash-starved Long Beach city leaders, the operator of the Queen Mary on said Tuesday he wants to take the famed ship to Tokyo Bay for three to five years in return for making badly needed repairs. Joseph Prevratil, who operates the Queen Mary under a lease from the city, proposed to spend $40 million on improvements to the 60-year-old ship and pay the city $5 million each year it is in Japan. "The Queen Mary needs an overhaul.

Businessman Joseph F. Prevratil, a onetime amusement park entrepreneur who now operates the Queen Mary, was laying ambitious plans to move the famed ship from Long Beach to Tokyo in a deal valued in the tens of millions of dollars, even as he was fighting off creditors in a bankruptcy in Riverside. The fusion of blue-sky dreams and bankruptcy comes as no surprise to those who have followed Prevratil's career.

Long Beach City Auditor Robert E. Fronke has concluded that the Walt Disney Co. has done its part to maintain the Queen Mary, which is badly rusted and needs as much as $27 million in repairs and maintenance. Fronke said that his findings, which were reported to a City Council committee on Tuesday, were based on a review of documents and other information dating back to 1989.

The Walt Disney Co. announced Friday that it is pulling out of its Long Beach operation at the Queen Mary and Spruce Goose, throwing the future of the famed tourist attractions in doubt and extinguishing the city's hopes that Disney would develop part of the local waterfront. Disney's departure comes on the heels of its decision last December to abandon plans for building a major theme park on the Queen Mary site.

The Walt Disney Co.'s decision to pack up and leave town has left Long Beach in a swirl of fault-finding and questions--about what went wrong and what to do next.

Keeping the Queen Mary attraction open through the end of the year after its scheduled closure in September would cost the Port of Long Beach about $2.7 million, according to a consultant's report released Wednesday. If officials decide to close the hotel on the ship but keep the ship open for tours, the port would lose about $1.6 million, according to the city-funded report by Economic Research Associates.

After two months of unemployment, Joy Ortega was tickled to be polishing furniture in preparation for Friday's reopening of the Queen Mary. The cleaning would soon be done, and Ortega, 64, would reclaim her position of seven years as a cashier at Sir Winston's restaurant aboard the vessel. "We're all doing everybody's work," said Ortega, who tried unsuccessfully to find another job while the ship was closed. "We don't care what we do as long as we get everything done."

Long Beach has reached an agreement potentially worth $9 million that would settle a rent dispute between the city and the operator of the Queen Mary harbor tourist attraction. The pact between the city and Queen's Seaport Development Inc., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March 2005, must still be approved by a bankruptcy court judge. The agreement, however, is expected to clear the way for a court-appointed trustee, Howard M.

Preservationist Diane Rush cringes when she looks at the gift and souvenir shops that were recently installed on the historic deck of the Queen Mary, altering the ship's original design. Then she turns her attention to what has not been restored, such as the areas where crew members worked and lived, and the dining area where economy-class passengers ate. The ship's operator "is not putting anything into historic preservation," Rush said.