Construction is under way on a new cruise terminal scheduled to open in November that will be the first located in the Cove area near restaurants and walking distance of the recently opened seven-story Exploration Tower at Port Canaveral. The 188,000 square-foot, two-story terminal will be able to accommodate ships with 6,000 passengers or more and will have a 1,000-vehicle parking garage.
“The new Cruise Terminal 1 will create 1500 jobs and yield USD250 million in regional economic impact in 2015, growing to USD500 million in 2016 and 5-7-percent annual growth thereafter,” said Port Canaveral CEO John E. Walsh. “It will bring the Port Authority between USD3-to-USD5 million in revenue.”
New cruise terminals also are planned for construction in 2016 and another by 2019 to handle increased passengers expected to grow to 5 million by 2015, 6 million by 2017 and doubling to 8 million by mid-2020s.
As part of overall expansion plans, Phase 1 of a dredging project begins in May to widen Canaveral’s three-and-one-half-mile channel by 100 feet, expanding the current width to 500 feet overall and deepening the entrance to 46 feet to accommodate larger vessels. This project is the first step to deepen the harbor eventually to 55 feet.
In the short term, Port Canaveral is extending its cargo reach with development of intermodal facilities in the north end of Brevard County, working with Titusville officials and Flagler Global Logistics on an inland port that will link barge service from Port Canaveral to a distribution hub and logistics center in south Titusville. The inland port is expected to be operational in March/April 2015 and will create 100 jobs. Flagler plans to build as many as five warehouses of up to 450,000 square feet east of Space Coast Regional Airport along the Florida East Coast Railway lines.
Long-term, the Port Authority is working to connect rail from Kennedy Space Center to a new state-of-the-art container terminal in Port Canaveral’s north cargo area. With the arrival this month of two post-Panamas ship-to-shore container cranes which will undergo major refurbishment and be operational by November in conjunction with the opening of the new container terminal.
“The on-dock rail program is expected to generate 5000 jobs within 5-7 years and 10,000-15,000 within 10-15 years,” Walsh said. “The cargo terminal will start with 100-200 jobs in mid-2014 and increase to 500 by 2015.”
As part of our recreation/destination facility upgrades, a new indoor/outdoor event center is planned in the Cove near the new Exploration Tower. Port Canaveral also is building a new boat ramp near Jetty Park that will open in summer 2014.