RED WING — The fruition of a long-simmering river renaissance project in Red Wing will coincide perfectly with this week's announcement that Viking Cruises will have luxury river vessels traveling from New Orleans to St. Paul by 2017.
Randy Olson, executive director of the Red Wing Port Authority, said the historic river city will begin construction on the $5 million, multi-year project this spring after more than five years of planning and preparation. The work will include a $1 million dock at Levee Park, an extension of the Cannon Valley Trail, wall upgrades and other improvements at Levee Park near the St. James Hotel in downtown Red Wing.
The dock was awarded $800,000 in bonding from the Minnesota Port Development Assistance Program in 2014 and will be built to accommodate Viking's specially designed river longboats, along with the frequent stops from the American Queen and Mississippi Queen, two popular boats that travel the Mississippi River.
The luxury long boats will cost about $100 million apiece to build and hold up to 300 passengers each, though they'll be about one-tenth the size of the company's ocean vessels. Two per year will be built starting in 2017 to create a fleet of six.
"We are excited about the prospect of bringing modern river-cruising to the Mississippi, a river that has been traveled by explorers for centuries," Viking Cruises chairman Torstein Hagen said via press release. "We know our passengers will enjoy the rich history, culture and cuisine of all the great cities and towns along the Mississippi River from New Orleans to St. Paul."
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While Viking has not publicly declared where the vessels will stop, Olson says Red Wing has been engaged in private discussions with the company for months and it will be one of the featured stops. Key attractions in the historic river city include the Red Wing Pottery Museum, the Red Wing Shoe Museum, Barn Bluff and, perhaps, a revitalized downtown district that could see another $1 million invested over the next five years.
Olson is optimistic that adding thousands of affluent new consumers to the city's streets will prove beneficial to the city's economic vitality.
"That's pretty significant because these are people who typically have high discretionary incomes," Olson said. "The economic impact of adding Viking to this mix is huge."
According to the Red Wing Port Authority, the breakdown of the $5 million project is as follows: $1 million for the new dock; $992,000 for an expanded trail system, focused on Cannon Valley Trail; $3.8 million for Levee Road Construction over the next two years; and $1.5 million for wall improvements. Olson says that city money has been "leveraged" to acquire financial support from state, federal and private funds, including assistance from the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
No Red Wing City Council members returned phone calls on deadline, but Red Wing Planning Director Brian Peterson called this a monumental opportunity for the city of 16,000.
"It's a major, major thing for us," Peterson said. "It would put all those people right at our downtown doorstep so we're really interested in working with them on this."
Red Wing's new river renaissance project adds to an already busy construction schedule for the city over the next few years. It has $22 million in capital improvement projects budgeted for 2015, including a river walk project near the Mississippi River, a Downtown Main Street revitalization project, and plans to build a fire station and training facility on the city's west side.
While those projects may create lengthy traffic headaches, the revamped downtown district figures to sparkle by the time luxury cruise ships are ready to visit.
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"Whenever you talk about this scale of construction, there's always some concerns for accessibility … (but) it's really about how we're ramping up to accommodate a more memorable experience for the passengers and staff not only for the Viking but for the two other river boats who come to Red Wing," Olson said.
