Hornblower deal could bring 100 jobs to city shipyard
A decade after Derecktor Shipyards shut down its Bridgeport operations in bankruptcy, Hornblower Group has reserved the facility — known today as Bridgeport Boatworks — to perform maintenance on a fleet of cruise ships, sightseeing boats and ferries servicing New York City and other ports stretching from Boston to Norfolk, Va.
After an $ 8 million investment, the contract between Bridgeport Boatworks, Hornblower and RCI Group will return about 100 jobs to the Bridgeport yard — a number that is similar to what was reached at the peak of Derecktor’s operations. RCI is leading development of the nearby Steelpointe Harbor district.
Bridgeport Boatworks and Hornblower confirmed the deal after a query by Hearst Connecticut Media on Hornblower’s plans to hire a Bridgeport-based naval architect, who would lead the work of fleet engineering and design
teams.
“We’re really excited about it,” said Bridgeport Boatworks co- owner Harry Boardsen. “It’s a ... big investment here in Bridgeport, and just a big part of reigniting the harbor.”
Gov. Ned Lamont has scheduled a Monday visit to Bridgeport Boatworks to announce the deal formally.
“I congratulate Bridgeport Boatworks and Steelpointe developers on attracting a nationally renowned company like Hornblower to Bridgeport harbor,” Lamont said in a written statement. “It’s great to see new jobs and economic development coming to our largest city.”
From the Statue of Liberty to Bridgeport
Boardsen opened Bridgeport Boatworks in July 2018, after seeing a city request for proposals on new uses for the Derecktor site. Officials suggested he pair up with RCI Group, which is leading the development of Steelpointe Harbor across the water, where a new marina and a Bass Pro Shops outfitter store are located.
RCI owns the property where Bridgeport Boatworks operates the shipyard, with Hornblower to hold a formal tenancy with a contingent of its employees on site.
“We’re not cutting any corners,” said Robert Christoph Jr., president of RCI Group, speaking above a stiff breeze whistling through rigging and boat covers in the Bridgeport Boatworks yard. “We’re doing this best in class. We’re going to be bigger than anybody else in this space.”
Boardsen runs Noank Shipyard, at the mouth of the Mystic River, and Seaport Marine, in downtown Mystic, with about 400 customers between the two yards. He has floated the idea of redeveloping Seaport Marine into a waterside plaza with townhouses and a hotel that could be accessed both by boardwalk and boat, including a pavilion for kayakers along the Mystic River.
Now, Boardsen is taking on a very different challenge: keeping up with the upkeep of the Hornblower fleet, whose logo is a familiar one in New York City Harbor.
Hornblower runs ferry services, dining and sightseeing cruises, including tourist shuttles to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
Boardsen said he put himself onto Hornblower’s radar weeks in the early days of owning Bridgeport Boatworks as a maintenance option.
“Being in the boatyard business, it always sort of frustrated me that this place was empty and not being utilized,” Boardsen said. “It turned out we had a mutual interest in reawakening the facility and ... putting this yard back into action.”
Hornblower owns or operates more than 150 vessels in the Northeast alone, all of which require ongoing maintenance and refitting to pass biennial U. S. Coast Guard inspections.
Nick Monroe, Hornblower’s vice president of real estate and asset management, who has an MBA from the Yale School of Management, said it will take up to a few hours for its New York City harbor vessels to traverse the East River and Long Island Sound to Bridgeport Harbor .
Monroe said he expects Bridgeport Boatworks will be working on between five and 10 Hornblower vessels at any point in time, ranging from inspection preparations spanning a few weeks to refits lasting months.
“As our fleet and our company has grown so much, we’ve been looking to vertically integrate that aspect of our operations,” Monroe said. “When you have that many vessels with that many needs, you just want to control your own destiny more. We work with a fairly large number of shipyards and will continue to, but we wanted our own option.”
‘ Picking up business wherever we could’
Terry MacRae created the predecessor company to Hornblower Group in 1980, purchasing a small Berkeley, Calif. company that operated a pair of yachts in San Francisco Bay including M/ V Admiral Hornblower.
Kevin Rabbitt, who previously worked for a Pittsburgh, Pa.- based company that offers broadcast services, including for live events, replaced MacRae as Hornblower CEO last year.
Through purchase and acquisition, Hornblower’s New York City Harbor fleet became large enough to prompt a 2019 demand by New York’s attorney general for the company to sublease space at Manhattan’s Pier 40 to a competitor, determining the company’s vessels threatened to clog so many New York City piers that it would be difficult for dinner cruise rivals to find suitable dock space.
Hornblower is also known for sightseeing tours it offers at Niagara Falls and Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. It runs extended cruises via two lines: American Queen Steamboat, which cruises the Mississippi, Ohio and Columbia rivers among others in oldtime paddle steamers; and Victory Cruise Lines, which provides coastal tours in New England, the Bahamas, the Great Lakes, Alaska and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
On some of those routes, Hornblower’s itineraries overlap with those of American Cruise Lines based in Guilford, whose founder Charles A. Robertson died last year.
Hornblower knows Bridgeport already, after Derecktor’s work in 2011 on a passenger boat for shuttles to the Statue of Liberty, designed with hydrogen fuel cells to generate electricity for propulsion.
Derecktor declared bankruptcy the following year, closing in Bridgeport but retaining its main facility in Mamaroneck, N. Y. It continues to build vessels there today, including the RV Spirit of the Sound hybrid catamaran launched in 2016 for Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, and another named for Harbor Harvest market in East Norwalk.
Opening in July 2018, Bridgeport Boatworks had just nine customers for its boatyard services in its first season, split between commercial vessels and leisure craft that Boardsen described as “retail” work.
“We were picking up business wherever we could,” Boardsen said. “We’ve migrated more toward the retail these last couple of years, but with the introduction of [ Hornblower] we are going to have a nice split of heavy commercial work and our retail work.”
With Steelpointe Harbor including a recreational marina, Bridgeport Boatworks will now add another major working boat operation in Bridgeport in addition to the Bridgeport Port Jefferson Ferry. Bridgeport Boatworks currently has a pair of mobile lifts, the larger of which can handle boats of up to 275 tons. The newest lift will be able to haul 700ton vessels.
Boardsen said Bridgeport Boatworks will seek other commercial work, and did not rule out exploring a “periphery” role in his words for the site as a staging ground for Park City Wind, a wind farm planned for off the southern New England coast.
Developer Avangrid plans to assemble components for the project in Bridgeport to be shipped up Long Island Sound and out to sea for installation, with Eversource choosing New London as its own hub for the Revolution Wind farm it has in the works. The wind farms will generated electricity for Connecticut customers of Eversource and the United Illuminating subsidiary of Orange- based Avangrid.
As Bridgeport Boatworks ramps up its launch schedule this spring, work will proceed on the big lift for later in the year, at which point Hornblower vessels will begin to become a common sight in Bridgeport Harbor.
“Having the marina here, having the fuel dock here: we’re really trying to put something new in place here ... and redefine Bridgeport in a way,” Boardsen said.