A historic Rotterdam bridge might be dismantled to permit for Jeff Bezos’s megayacht
A plan to temporarily dismantle the middle section of Rotterdam’s iconic Koningshavenbrug, a first-of-its-kind for Europe lift bridge that first opened in 1927 and was subsequently restored after the May 14, 1940, bombardment of the Dutch city by German forces, has been greeted with groans and eye-rolling from Rotterdammers along with criticism from local historians—and the backlash largely has to do with why the bridge, locally known as simply De Hef, will likely be taken apart.
Just outside of Rotterdam in the municipality Alblasserdam, custom yacht builder Oceanco is finishing up work on its latest creation: a three-masted beast of a vessel for Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos. At 416-feet-long, Bezos’ new $500 million boat is set to be the largest sailing yacht in the world and is so massive that a section of De Hef must be “partly demolished” so that it can move from Oceanco’s Alblasserdam shipyard to the open ocean, according to English-language Dutch media outlet DutchNews.nl.
Per DutchNews.nl, the beloved bridge, which carried train traffic up until 1993, underwent a significant renovation in 2017 that Rotterdam council members pledged would be the final time that De Hef, which is a Dutch national monument, would be dissembled. Fast-forward five years, and it appears that this promise will be bent to accommodate the passage of the Bezos megayacht, known as Y721.
In conversation with local broadcaster Rijnmond, project leader Marcel Walravens relayed that if the effort is executed as planned without snags, the middle section of De Hef will only be removed for a day. “It is about a ship with high masts which cannot pass through the bridge,” he explained. “The only alternative is to take out the middle section.”
Despite the short duration of the planned bridge disassembly scheme, locals are already planning to express their displeasure with the move. As reported by NL Times, a June 1 rotten egg-throwing event at De Hef has already attracted 2,600 interested participants on Facebook.
“Rotterdam was rebuilt from the rubble by the people of Rotterdam, and we won’t just take that apart for the phallic symbol of a megalomaniac billionaire. Not without a fight!” reads the event page.
As noted by the Washington Post, although costs and a formal timetable for the project have yet to be announced, the city has assured Rotteerdams that Bezos and Oceanco will foot the entire bill for the deconstruction effort
Speaking to the New York Times, a spokeswoman for the city relayed that Y721 will be able to successfully clear all of Rotterdam’s other bridges on its way out to sea.
