Rochester misses the boat on fast-growing Great Lakes cruises 

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The party’s jumpin’ aboard the Great Lakes’ fast-growing fleet of cruise ships — but Rochester hasn’t been asked to dance.

The Great Lakes are a hot destination for cruise-lovers the world over. Growth began before the pandemic and resumed afterward. Passenger numbers rose 25 percent last year and are estimated to grow another 15 percent this season, according to Cruise the Great Lakes, a government-sponsored promotional consortium.

Eight cruise companies, half based in Europe, now serve the Great Lakes and the connected upper St. Lawrence River. They’ve brought in a new generation of vessels, some of them with accommodations for 400 people and luxury from bow to stern.

Think sprawling staterooms, gourmet dining, onboard mini-submarines and underwater lounges — all for anywhere between $1,500 and $15,000 per person, depending on the particulars of the cruise.

“Cruising certainly has exploded. It’s becoming stronger by the day and by the year,” said Stephen Burnett, executive director of the Great Lakes Cruise Association, which has spent two decades helping grow the industry.

Before the region’s cruising season ends in October, some 170,000 people will have taken one of the 125 cruises scheduled this year on the five lakes and the river.

They’ll stop at more than 40 ports — huge metropolises like Toronto and Chicago; medium-sized cities, like Duluth, Minnesota, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and quaint waterfront villages and historical and natural landmarks, like Mackinac Island, Michigan.
But none of those passengers will disembark in Rochester. Our city used to be an occasional port for cruisers, but the most recent scheduled visit, in the summer of 2020, was canceled when the operator went out of business during the pandemic.
Local tourism officials can’t explain why passenger vessels no longer stop here but they want them back.

“I think that Rochester should be a stop for some of these ships. There’s so much to offer,” said Rachel Laber, vice president of communications for Visit Rochester, the region’s official tourism bureau.

She noted the area’s many museums, parks, the public market, breweries and walkable neighborhoods, such as Park Avenue.

“We would love to make the case to the cruise operators,” Laber said.

Laber acknowledged, however, that Visit Rochester has taken no steps to lure cruise companies here since before the pandemic, and executives of the trade groups representing Great Lakes cruise lines said they haven’t heard from anyone in Rochester.
But it may not be too late for Rochester to raise its hand.

“The cruise lines are always looking for new places, new ports of call, that will work with them,” said David Lorenz, a Michigan tourism official who chairs Cruise the Great Lakes.

CITY asked six cruise companies in Germany, France, Switzerland and the United States what factors kept Rochester from being a port of call but received no substantive responses.

Great Lakes cruises, which attract an affluent crowd, can provide at least a modest economic boost to port operators. Passengers who disembark and tour local attractions can collectively drop tens of thousands of dollars.

There also is a community pride factor in having a gleaming vessel in port.
“When cruise ships come to a city, it’s like a mark certifying it as a place of worth,” Lorenz said. “It gets you to think differently about that city.”

Like Rochester, Buffalo has not hosted cruise ships for years. But unlike Rochester, Buffalo is actively working to change that.

Credit for the effort may be due to Gov. Kathy Hochul, who last summer declared that her hometown deserved to be a port of call. “What a radical idea,” she told reporters. “We’re gonna get it done.”

A state waterfront development agency followed up on the governor’s directive by hiring a consultant in mid-March to determine which of two sites on the Lake Erie shore was best for a Buffalo terminal.
When asked if Hochul or other state officials plan actions to make Rochester, Oswego or other Lake Ontario ports more attractive to cruise ships, a spokesperson for the governor, Matthew Janiszewski, said the Buffalo study “may help us inform future investments in other parts of the state.”

Rochester City Councilman Mitch Gruber said he felt the Hocul administration’s focus was misplaced.

“I’d like to see the state, rather than spending money to build new (port) infrastructure in Buffalo, help us maximize the infrastructure we have,” he said.

Visit Buffalo Niagara tourism officials have had numerous conversations with cruise-ship operators and president Patrick Kaler said he is “absolutely” confident the vessels will come once a terminal is ready in 2026 or so.

Asked why Rochester is not part of the surging cruise business, he said, “I have no idea why they’re left out of it at this point.”

Rochester, of course, already has a terminal, built in the early 2000s at a cost of $19 million to host the ill-fated fast ferry to Toronto.

It has also hosted cruise ships. In 2015, the administration of then-mayor Lovely Warren commissioned a study to learn what would be needed to lure more cruisers here.

The study, done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, concluded the port would remain a viable stop for cruise ships. It said passengers had been bused to the George Eastman House, and ticked off other attractions that cruisers might visit —High Falls, the Strong National Museum of Play, and the National Susan B. Anthony House & Museum.
The study recommended five basic improvements at the city-owned terminal to help attract more business, including dredging near the terminal dock, and the creation of a list of suppliers, contractors, and others who could work with cruise ships when they call, and more promotion of the port to cruise companies.

Laber, the Visit Rochester official, said her agency has promoted the city to cruise operators in the past and does create lists of vendors and contractors.

But it does not appear that the city has arranged dredging along the river wall by the terminal.

The Corps of Engineers gets congressional funding to dredge the shipping channel in the middle of the river but does not deepen other areas near the river mouth.

“Periodic deeper dredging outside the navigation channel and along the terminal dock wall at the Port of Rochester would be needed to accommodate large cruise ships — and those costs would need to be covered by someone other than the Corps,” said Mark Gregor, who managed port redevelopment for the city until 2017.
Gregor, who no longer works in city government, recalls one occasion when silt deposits along the terminal river forced a cruise ship captain to anchor off shore and ferry passengers to the port by small boat.

The only funding in the city budget for dredging is less than $10,000 a year for work near the entrance to the small-boat marina. Gregor said dredging to accommodate large cruise ships would cost considerably more.

City officials did not respond when asked about dredging or other changes recommended in the Corps of Engineers study, and provided no comment regarding cruise lines docking in Rochester.

Some cruise ships now plying the Great Lakes are bigger than those in service before the pandemic, and the Corps study did not examine whether such large vessels could fit lengthwise at the terminal dock.

Whether the distance of local attractions to the port is a hindrance is another question.

Unlike many port cities, in which development began on the shore and then spread inward, Rochester developed inland, specifically in and around High Falls and the juncture of the Genesee River and the Erie Canal. There are only a few amusements within walking distance of the terminal.

Cruise advocates said any shortcomings in Rochester can be overcome.
“Cruise operators have told me they do want a beautiful port of call,” Lorenz said. “But they’ll come if the facility works in other ways and if it’s easy to get their people to a downtown core and other attractions.”

“As new ships come into play — and they will — they will be looking for new ports of call and new excursions,” he added.

After talking to CITY, Lorenz said his organization would reach out to Rochester to offer advice about becoming a cruise-ship port.

Burnett, whose Kingston, Ontario-based cruising association once counted Rochester as a member, said the port remains a suitable stop for all but the largest of the current passenger vessels.

He said there are plenty of attractions within a short bus ride; even the Finger Lakes, farther afield, might be a good destination for cruise-passenger visits.

“Rochester has the chops, both within the city and the surrounding area,” he said. “But it has to decide if it wants to get in the game.”

Steve Orr is a freelance writer for CITY.