PortMiami's MSC Cruises terminal deal upsized to $400mPortMiami's MSC Cruises terminal deal upsized to $400m

This makes a total contribution of $186m from PortMiami. The added $136m consists of $60m over a 30-month construction period and $76m to be financed over a 10-year period.

Resolution to go for full commission consideration

The resolution, approved at today's Miami-Dade PortMiami and Environmental Resilience Committee meeting, will go to a full County Commission vote.

Similar to Royal Caribbean Group's Terminal A deal, MSC Cruises would lease the land from the port and build and operate the terminal. Once a threshold of 4.5m passenger movements a year is reached, MSC would pay an additional rent.

MSC would build a shared terminal with two berths for its ships, while there are provisions for a third berth, Berth 10, to be used by another line.

Disney is talking with another port

PortMiami continues to have discussions with Disney. However, according to the resolution, Disney also intends to conduct due diligence with a competing port regarding a long-term berthing agreement, though it has not walked away from Miami.

The competing port was not identified in the resolution documents.

As recently reported here, Port Everglades' renegotiated deal with Carnival Corp. & plc puts a berth in play just up the road from Miami.

Looking past the pause

'The message is that Miami-Dade County continues to see tremendous upside in the cruise industry. Even though Disney is looking elsewhere, they still feel MSC's business is strong enough to support the terminal,' an industry source said. 'Even in this paused period, this is further proof that infrastructure development is of keen interest to the cruise lines as they look to normalize and grow going forward.'