Relocating car ferry and freight activities to another part of the facility and creating more marina berths, with provisions for private superyachts, are among some of the ideas which could feature in the scheme.
And Doug Bannister, chief executive of Ports of Jersey, says the work, dubbed the ‘Harbour Masterplan’, is also designed – in part – to deal with capacity issues currently being experienced by companies bringing freight into the Island on trailers.
‘Phase one of the development, which is the platform of what we want to do, is going to see us investing in increased capacity for the Elizabeth traffic. It will see some work done along the Albert Pier, some work done in a few sites around La Folie and one or two other areas as well,’ he said.
‘The long-term ambition is to provide the capacity that we require to segregate out leisure from commercial activity so that pretty much means moving all the big ships and big freight out of the central harbour and then opening up the central harbour [Elizabeth Terminal area] to leisure development but also making the inner harbour [New North Quay area] more leisure related.’
Mr Bannister added there was still a great degree of potential for growth within the marine leisure industry and claimed that the development of the Harbour would benefit nautically-orientated businesses.
‘We have got a great marine leisure sector and we are situated in some of the best cruising grounds in northern Europe. It is an area that we know we can do more with,’ he said.
‘We have got waiting lists for all of our marinas and so if we could create more capacity for marine leisure we also know that the add-ons to that are the yacht brokers, marine traders and the all the service guys’ activity expands as well. By concentrating all of that within the pierheads then it could lead to a much greater overall product offering.
‘The other thing is too that when you look inside the pier heads there is quite a lot of water that is available in there 24 hours a day whereas the Old Harbour, of course, then also St Helier [marina] and Elizabeth [marina] are tidal restricted.
‘We can upgrade our product and, because of the size that is in there, we can handle much larger vessels such as superyachts but we also know that there is an increased demand for larger boat lengths from private owners here in the Island that we cannot accommodate within our marinas right now.’
Currently, Ports of Jersey are working on a £42-million project to upgrade the Airport and bring it in line with modern aviation regulations.
However, Mr Bannister added that the amount of money which could be invested in the Harbour could far exceed that being spent on the Airport.
‘A lot of folks have focussed on the integrated terminal work that we are doing at the Airport. The amount of investment we could put into the Harbour could eclipse that,’ he said.
‘It may not be all of our investment, it may be from developers or other private businesses, but we do know that there is quite a lot of useful investment that could take place down there.’
