Viking Cruises are back on mayor's radar

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BY CHUCK VANDENBERG

PCC EDITOR

FORT MADISON - Fort Madison may have received some reason for optimism regarding Viking Cruise lines recently.

At Tuesday's City Council meeting, Fort Madison Mayor Brad Randolph said he had a discussion over the weekend and efforts are back underway to restart the cruise line's efforts to have tours along the Mississippi.

"I had a discussion over the weekend and you can ask me about it, but I don't know how much I'll be able to add, but the Viking Cruise Lines project is moving forward on the Mississippi and Fort Madison remains on the schedule, so from the ashes it's back."

In 2016 and 2017, the city was engaged in discussions to possibly bring a port call of about four hours several times a week to Fort Madison, but federal regulations under the Jones Act prohibits maritime commerce on waterways within the United States with ships not constructed in the country. In general purposes, the Jones Act prohibits any foreign-built or foreign-flagged vessel from engaging in coastal trade within the U.S.

In an email this afternoon, a spokesman for the European-based Vikings Cruise line said the company continues to work on the Mississippi project, "but at this point we are not able to share additional details."

According to a video of a Dubuque City Council work session on Sept. 17, David Simmons, a company consultant for Vikings, said the company had a renewed interest in tours along the Mississippi River and spoke with Dubuque city officials about wanting to do seven-day cruises from St. Paul, Minnesota to St. Louis with three Iowa stops; Dubuque, Davenport, and Burlington.

Viking officials didn't respond to questions about how the maritime hurdles would be cleared, but Simmons told Dubuque officials that plans for domestic cruises are nearing completion.

Simmons told Dubuque city officials that the Mississippi River is an under-served market and he said by 2027 Viking ships could have 165,000 passengers per year on six vessels touring the Mississippi.

The company would offer three itineraries and the one that could include Fort Madison would be the seven-day one way trip from St. Louis to St. Paul. Leaving from St. Louis proposals would include a day-three stop either at Burlington or Fort Madison. The Fort Madison stop is proposed to include a tour of the Old Fort Madison or Historic Nauvoo.

Simmons said if the company begins building ships in October, and he couldn't guarantee building would start then, it takes two years to build a vessel. He said they would be selling the cruises 90 days after they start building.

"That's how successful the Viking's brand is."

He said the company would be interested in helping, specifically Dubuque, with the costs associated with a floating dock that would allow passengers to exit the boat no matter what the river water level is.

Simmons told Dubuque officials that, as a foreign entity, Viking couldn't own the vessel and Edison Chouest, out of Louisiana, will build and own the vessel and charter it to Viking.

"It took a long time for us to make sure we are doing the right thing. It's a lot farther along now. It is going so fast now that I believe announcements will be around the corner," Simmons told the Dubuque council.

Randolph said he thinks that the plan at this point is to dock in Fort Madison. He said the dock here, as was previously discussed with Viking officials, would give the cruise line 24/7 access, something that other stops may not be able to rpovide.

"I think the plan at this point is that it's Fort Madison. If Fort Madison for some reason doesn't work, whether it's too shallow, or the dock isn't compatible, they would need some sort of back up plan," Randolph said Monday evening.

"Based on our first discussions, the thought was they were going to have an exclusive docking agreement with the city, and they wanted that so they could have unlimited access to that location."

He said original discussions included Viking helping with some of the costs of getting the dock ready. The city currently has city water and electricity available, but Randolphs said some designs would need to be created to see exactly what the dock could look like.

Randolph said the city shouldn't take any steps on anything until a docking agreement has been reached.

"As we keep our fingers crossed and things progress, we're going to have make provisions for that first ship that would be late 2020 or early 2021. The clock is ticking now, and I don't want to put the cart before the horse, but if the opportunity comes, we need to be ready to grab it with both hands."

Brad Randolph, Davenport, Dubuzue, Mississippi River, Nauvoo, Pen City Current, VIkings' Cruise ships

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