Cruise ports in focus San Francisco

San Francisco has set out to take the world by storm and it’s not just a desire for more cruise income. The existence of the city's historic and highly individual waterfront area may depend on its success in building its cruise destination status. The city council calculates that each time a cruise liner calls in at San Francisco, around $700,000 to $1 million is generated in direct purchases of goods and services.

In 2008, more 175,000 passengers sailed to or from San Francisco on board 60 liners. So now the port wants to create a top-grade cruise ship passenger terminal to replace the existing terminal at Pier 35 – which is definitely showing its age and doesn’t have many of the facilities modern cruise passengers have come to expect. Port commissioners are about to let a team of architects and engineers loose to create a new 120,000-square-foot, $60 million terminal to be located where Pier 27 now stands at the foot of Lombard Street. Lombard Street is dubbed America’s crookedest street and its steep, hilly profile runs past beautiful Victorian mansions in switchback fashion. It’s entirely paved with bricks and has featured in countless car chases filmed in San Francisco, making it a massive tourist attraction for cruise passengers, as is the city as a whole with its famous markets and hotels, beautiful seafront and many boutiques and stalls selling hippy fashions and wholefoods.

The plan is for the building of the new terminal to begin in 2013 and end around a year later.