New cruise terminal earmarked at cruise port

Work on a new terminal for the St. Harbour to process cruise passengers will likely
start within a month.
Operations Manager at Antigua Cruise Port, Rawle Reynolds, said the terminal is
necessary especially in light of the new emphasis on home-porting as part of the
cruise tourism business.
“We definitely need that new terminal which will be adjacent to the 5 th Berth pier
on the Newgate Street. It will not be on the pier but close to it so that the cruise
passengers can enter it to be processed,” he reported.
He revealed that equipment will start moving to the site shortly and actual
construction is slated to commence in May.
“When you have home-porting, you are going to have passengers arriving while
others are leaving, you therefore must have a building where passengers can check-
in or check-out with the presence of border control officers representing
immigration and customs processing thousands of passengers during visits from
vessels such as Arvia of P&O Cruises,” he stated.
According to Reynolds the terminal will operate similar to the terminal building at
the airport, only that it will process passengers who arrive or depart from a cruise
ship. Over the past two seasons, these activities took place under a large tent put in
place for the processing, but in the words of the operations manager, the time has
come for a more permanent structure to handle these arrangements.
The terminal building forms part of a major land-side development that ACP will
undertake. The complex will be erected on lands running from the carpark on
Lower Newgate Street to Barnes Funeral Home, which will relocate ahead of the
development.