With a 365 room hotel aboard and others possible on the property, and with the ship’s extensive and legendary hospitality and banqueting capabilities restored, the Queen Mary property could be a significant conference center and house a major convention magnet in the City of Long Beach.

A good place to begin this development is with state of the art conference meeting rooms.

• The lounges and banqueting rooms on the ship were not designed for conference meeting use. Columns intrude on sight-lines and their possible use as meeting rooms is what keeps them stripped and dark most of the time.

The best place to build for state of the art business meeting conference rooms is in new construction in the Queen’s Wharf Complex that we’ve recommended be built adjacent to the forward half of the Queen Mary.

We see:

• Nine large conference rooms with moveable partitions between them allowing for the creation of a one or more massive "ballrooms", when desired.

The Queen’s Wharf Complex would house the business meetings and seminars associated with conferences and conventions. Hospitality and banqueting events would be held on the Queen Mary itself.

With most potential hotel sites in downtown Long Beach currently being developed as residential space instead of hotel space, the vast undeveloped Queen Mary property might be critical to the development of the next phase of convention business in Long Beach.

• The isolation of the Queen Mary property from the downtown convention needs to be addressed -- and might be solved with an aerial tram from the property to the plaza of the downtown convention center.