Manhattan Cruise Terminal Overhaul Targets Space, Shore Power

By Daniel Okafor

About 1 million passengers pass through New York City’s Manhattan Cruise Terminal each year, roughly half of them from out of town and spending on hotels, meals and shopping before or after sailing.

For hotels, restaurants and retailers, those visitors are a direct sales channel, not merely foot traffic. The traffic and spending figures establish scale, although the event disclosed no dollar total for visitor outlays.

The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), which oversees the terminal, first presented a master plan for the site in late 2025 and is now refining it. NYCEDC also operates the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, giving it responsibility for both.

The questions came at “The Next Wave of Cruise,” a seminar organized by New York Maritime (NYMAR) and the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), and hosted by law firm Holland & Knight. The session focused on New York’s cruise infrastructure.

Holland & Knight senior counsel Nicholas Kaasik moderated a panel that included:

• Bud Darr, CLIA president and CEO.
• Allison Dees, NYCEDC vice president and head of New York City’s cruise portfolio.
• Craig Fuehrer, Deutsche Bank Securities managing director and head of transportation investment banking.

Dees said cruising is an important part of New York City’s economy and what the city offers. For travel sellers, the New York-focused panel tied that proposition to the terminal’s ability to move more passengers without making the surrounding experience worse.

What runs out of space first?

“We know that the lines have larger ships that will be landing around 2032,” Dees said. “We typically see one step down from the largest ships.”

She said the terminal can physically handle arriving vessels, but its upland, or land-side, area struggles with crowds and vehicle traffic. The vessel fits; the landside operation does not. She also wants expansion designed so more passengers do not harm the surrounding community.

Her blunt assessment was simple: more space. Dees previously worked on NYCEDC’s ferry service connecting the city’s boroughs, experience directly relevant to passenger logistics. NYCEDC has held extensive talks with neighborhood groups, cruise lines and local service providers, including tugboat companies.

Until the landside works arrive, larger ships could add inventory for cruise sellers while the terminal constrains distribution to hotels, shops and restaurants. Local businesses benefit when passengers move easily through the terminal and into the city; poor circulation turns available demand into congestion.

How can the expansion be financed?

Fuehrer, who has extensive experience financing container terminals in the Port of New York and New Jersey, argued that New York’s large surrounding population makes the right visitor experience the draw. He then applied a hard test to the city’s expansion financing.

Infrastructure funds, including those that have backed the port’s container terminals, look for off-take commitments, meaning contracted users or buyers of capacity.

“You have to develop some trunk load of committed capacity that you can finance off of,” Fuehrer said. “It’s no different from the container ports here at the Port of New York, where you have to get these (cruise ships) guys to commit to slots that you can potentially securitize.”

In plain terms, future slot commitments and their associated cash flows could support borrowing. Still, the panel announced no financing package, capital amount or credit structure. For cruise sellers, slot commitments matter because they determine how much New York inventory can be placed and sold, and each line’s ability to compete for calls.

What changes at the berth?

Brooklyn Cruise Terminal already offers shore power, meaning ships can plug into the local electricity grid instead of running onboard diesel generators while docked. Dees said the city is committed to the same approach at Manhattan because it reduces local particulate pollution and greenhouse gases.

NYCEDC is planning shore power for the redeveloped Manhattan terminal. It is working with Con Edison to deliver it at three berths, or dock positions, and is also pursuing power at the existing site.

For cruise lines, shore power is part of the port proposition, not a decorative environmental amenity. If Manhattan can offer cleaner, grid-connected calls, New York becomes more competitive for itineraries; delays would weaken that pitch before it reaches the passenger.

LNG (liquefied natural gas) bunkering remains more complicated. The port does not currently permit it, although Dees pointed to upcoming calls by Disney Cruise Line’s LNG-powered Wish-class ships.

She said the city must work with the U.S. Coast Guard and New York City Fire Department to bring LNG into the fueling mix, adding that she would like to reach that point. Until permission and infrastructure exist, operators face uncertainty over how to handle a ship class whose fuel the port cannot supply. That uncertainty can complicate itinerary planning and the distribution of ship capacity.

The master plan is available at edc.nyc/project/manhattan-cruise-terminal-master-plan. The discussion disclosed no project budget, construction schedule, financing commitment or final berth design.

The terminal’s 1 million-passenger record establishes the demand. Ahead of the larger ships expected around 2032, NYCEDC must turn space, power and signed capacity into an operating plan. Otherwise, the bottleneck remains on land, where the revenue starts.