A piece of history is going to have to come down to make way for a mega yacht.
The Koningshaven Bridge in Rotterdam is going to be dismantled to allow Jeff Bezos’ watercraft to pass, BBC News reported.
The luxury yacht is being made by Oceanco and is 417 feet long — longer than a football field, or just short of the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza if the boat was standing on its end. The problem is the ship’s height of 130 feet is too tall to fit under the bridge — or about 24 feet shorter than The Chicago Water Tower.
A spokesperson for the city’s mayor confirmed that the bridge will be temporarily deconstructed with the cost of the work being paid at least partially by Bezos through Oceanco, Bloomberg reported.
Bezos currently is worth $175.8 billion according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
The center portion of the bridge, dubbed De Hef, will be removed, despite a pledge to never dismantle the bridge again after it was out of commission from 2014 to 2017.
De Hef is a lift bridge, but doesn’t lift high enough for the yacht’s masts to pass under, Bloomberg reported.
The mayor said the plan was approved after the number of jobs that were created in the boat’s construction as well as the promise that the bridge would be reassembled the way it is currently. It is also the only way the boat can get to open water, the mayor’s office said.
Still residents there are not happy with the plan.
“This man has earned his money by structurally cutting staff, evading taxes, avoiding regulations and now we have to tear down our beautiful national monument?” Rotterdam politician Stephan Leewis wrote on Twitter, according to Bloomberg. “That is really going a bridge too far.”
“Deze man heeft zijn geld verdiend door het uitknijpen van personeel, het ontwijken van belastingen/regelgeving en nu moeten wij ons mooie rijksmonument afbreken? Dat gaat echt een brug te ver” aldus @StephanLeewis die hierover een debat heeft aangevraagd.https://t.co/C5GvEztQcu
— GroenLinks Rotterdam (@groenlinksrdam) February 2, 2022
The bridge is expected to be down for a couple of weeks this summer.
The yacht, which has been connected to the Amazon founder since 2021, is known as Y721 and the largest in the world. It is so luxurious that it has a “support yacht” that will provide a helicopter landing pad since the masts will not allow for the landing of an aircraft onboard, Bloomberg reported.
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