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Company officials could not immediately be reached.
SpaceX approached port staff several months ago, and the deal came together rather quickly, Director Mario Cordero said in an interview.
“We’re honored, as our signage says, to be the ‘port of choice’ for SpaceX,” Cordero said. “We look forward to a collaborative relationship with them.”
The company will occupy a facility at Pier T beginning May 1, which will house the company’s West Coast launch vehicle recovery operations.
The Port of Long Beach said in a statement that the company would take over a waterfront facility vacated one year ago by Sea Launch, a commercial satellite launching company that had been at the port for 20 years.
A former Queen Mary operator neglected the ship and failed to perform more than $20 million in critical repair work, resulting in “significant issues and damage” to the historic vessel before the operator filed for bankruptcy, the city of Long Beach alleges in a recent court filing.
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The city filed legal action last week as part of ongoing bankruptcy hearings for current Queen Mary operator Eagle Hospitality Trust, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January. The ship’s lease is set to go to auction in May.
Former operator Urban Commons, which signed a 66-year lease to run the city-owned ship in 2016, created Eagle Hospitality Trust to list on the Singapore Stock Exchange in 2019. Eagle Hospitality took over as the ship’s operator last year after Urban Commons suffered a string of financial problems. However, Urban Commons’ limited liability corporation, Urban Commons Queensway, remains liable to the city under the lease agreement.
Long Beach City Auditor Laura Doud on Wednesday said former Queen Mary operator Urban Commons has not provided records to account for how $23 million was spent to repair the ship, despite having more than a year to produce the documents.
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Since December 2019, Doud has been investigating how $23 million in city-issued bonds was spent to fix some of the most critical repairs for the ship listed in a marine survey.
In a statement Wednesday, Doud said Urban Commons has not provided “electronic check register, cash account detail, bank statements and canceled checks, cashier’s checks, wire transfers or other payments made to vendors and subcontractors relating to the $23 million funded by the city.”
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