Bridgeport Harbor adds ferry maintenance facility
Hornblower Group expects to create up to 60 new jobs
Bridgeport Harbor is getting a new tenant, the harbor’s industrial and retail facility announced Monday, bringing another commercial operation to the waterfront of Connecticut’s largest city a decade after the shuttering of a shipbuilding company.
Hornblower Group, the operator of NYC Ferry, a network of ferry routes in New York; Statue Cruises at the Statue of Liberty; and ferry and vessel operations in North America and the United Kingdom, said it will use Bridgeport Boatworks for a vessel maintenance, upgrade and retrofit facility.
Bridgeport Boatworks, which launched in 2018 and plans to invest $8 million to improve and expand its operations, is a developing industrial, commercial and retail facility at Bridgeport Harbor.
Hornblower expects to create 45 to 60 jobs and Boatworks anticipates 20 new employees will be recruited as the facility grows.
Scott Thornton, chief operating officer of ferry and transportation services at Hornblower, said it will bring its fleet from the East Coast and eventually the Midwest for service and maintenance to the new port facility.
“We look forward to partnering with the city of Bridgeport to establish and build upon its reputation as a global maritime hub,” he said.
The announcement comes a decade after Derecktor Shipyards
Connecticut, which had been seen as a chance for Connecticut to expand its commercial shipbuilding industry, closed its operation at Bridgeport Harbor.
Bridgeport officials said then that Derecktor, which leased the shipyard from the city’s port authority in 2001, was not taking on new projects and has told the city that it is pursuing plans to reposition the company to make it profitable.
The state had invested in the shipbuilding company, betting that Derecktor would diversify the state’s maritime industry from its traditional roots in submarine construction at Electric Boat to also include construction and repair of yachts and other commercial vessels.