The World Cruise Center at the Port of Los Angeles is a sprawling, three-building complex near the western base of the Vincent Thomas Bridge that accommodates massive cruise ships that travel the world.
Its traffic is such that the Port is attempting to build an additional cruise ship berth in the Outer Harbor to handle the overflow and to serve larger ships.
Los Angeles Harbor has always had a pleasure cruise trade since the early 1900s, when ships carried passengers to Catalina Island. Completed in 1920, the Catalina Terminal on Water St. in Wilmington was one of the first facilities built specifically for tourist travel.
That same year, the Los Angeles Steamship Co. was founded, initially to offer passenger cruises from Los Angeles to San Francisco on its ships, the Yale and the Harvard, based at Berth 155. In 1922, the company began passenger service to Honolulu on its City of Los Angeles steamship.
Individual cruise line companies continued to operate from various berths at the Port, but there was no centralized passenger terminal.
By the 1940s, American President Lines had established one of the Port’s largest cruise passenger operations at Berths 153 and 154 on Mormon Island. But on June 22, 1947, the tanker ship Markay exploded while taking on fuel at the Shell Oil terminal at Berth 167 across the channel. Flaming fuel from the exploding ship raced across the 600-foot wide waterway to the APL terminal buildings, which were destroyed.
APL responded by building a new $4.3 million terminal on the eight-acre site of the former one. The state-of-the-art buildings opened in 1950 and included the largest passenger/cargo terminal in the harbor.
APL’s terminal served the cruise lines for the next decade, but in 1958, the Port decided the time finally had come to build a central cruise ship terminal complex. The new $16 million complex would be constructed on a 50-acre site at Berths 91–93 on the main channel just south of the Vincent Thomas Bridge.
The gigantic main terminal was dedicated in March 1963, eight months before the opening of the bridge. The Port of Los Angeles owned the facility, but management and operations would be conducted by Consolidated Marine, a consortium of cruise ship operators, including APL and Pacific Far East Line.
The rectangular $4.3 million two-story building at 100 Swinford St. devoted its upper level for cruise travel operations, and its lower level for cargo. A spectators gallery was built on the upper level, along with two vehicle bridges up from ground level. The Berth 93 structure was remodeled and expanded in 2002.
The construction of the separate Catalina Sea and Air Terminal just north of it at Berth 95 in 1966 continued the process of centralizing passenger services in the Port. (Its current building on the site was erected in 2012.)
The 1980s brought about a cruise ship boom, fueled in part by television’s “Love Boat” and the cruise industry’s development of ever-larger and more luxurious ships, which resulted in a 400 percent increase in passengers in Los Angeles between 1979 and 1988.
The Port responded by building a new $11 million passenger terminal just south of the original one. It opened on April 29, 1988, with the cruise ship Azure Seas as its first arrival. The new building, dedicated solely to passenger ships, had a friendlier and less industrial feel than its predecessor.
It was built through a cooperative lease agreement involving six companies: Princess Cruises, Admiral Cruise Line, Carnival Cruise Lines, Royal Viking Line, Sitmar Cruises and Cunard Line. (Carnival moved its operations from the Port of Los Angeles to the Port of Long Beach in 2003.)
As cruise ships continued to grow larger in size, some limitations to the World Cruise Terminal began to appear in the early 2000s. It turns out the 185-foot-high Vincent Thomas Bridge is too low for some of the newer 200-foot-tall-and-higher ships to pass under in order to turn around when they leave port. Larger ships need to exit the area by going backwards, as the Queen Mary 2 had to do in 2006.
Port officials first confirmed that they had been looking at a proposal to create a new passenger terminal at the entrance to the Main Channel in 2003. They’re still discussing building the Outer Harbor Cruise Terminal twenty years later.
The 13-acre site encompassing Berths 46 and 50 at 3011 Miner St. sits across the West Channel from Cabrillo Beach and Cabrillo Marina, and some in the community have complained that the giant ships that would moor there would mar the ocean views in the area.
Debate continued until 2020, when the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic brought a sudden halt to cruise ship operations and further development of the Outer Harbor was tabled for two years.
The Port of Los Angeles still sees the Outer Harbor facility as a key part of its strategy to grow the cruise ship business. The cruise industry’s resumption of operations in 2022 probably will lead to further attempts to make the Port’s Outer Harbor plans a reality.
Sources:
“Complete Guide to Cruising from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach,” by Tanner Callais, Cruzely website, Nov. 8, 2021.
Daily Breeze archives.
Los Angeles Times archives.
“Must-Know Things About the Los Angeles Cruise Terminal,” CruiseHive website.
San Pedro News Pilot archives.
Waterfront Los Angeles / Port of Los Angeles website.
