Former Queen Mary historian Bill Cwiklo has spent 20 years formulating plans to revive and restore the ship. So why isn’t more being done about them?

PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY
Bill Cwiklo’s apartment has a reputation that precedes it—and in most respects, it does not disappoint. Sumptuously appointed with—in no particular order—an oil copy of one of [...]

Two mornings after he became the latest ex-captain of the Queen Mary, we caught up with former Save The Queen CEO Jeff Klein by telephone in … well, he wouldn’t say—although we did ascertain that it is in a time zone 12 hours away.
“It’s 8:15 p.m., and I’m having dinner … uhh … overseas,” Klein [...]

Before Long Beach has even finished cleaning up the bankruptcy mess left by the last Queen Mary leaseholder, the new one is already facing foreclosure.
Harry Saltzgaver of Gazette Newspapers led the way Friday in reporting  that the managing partners of Save The Queen, LLC—that would be Jeff Klein and Tom Hix—will have their interest in the [...]

Strange enough that the most-influential lobbyists in the city were gathered on the same side of an issue being considered by a Long Beach City Council committee Tuesday afternoon. The really weird part is that they seemed to be sitting on the side that was losing.
Two-thirds of the council’s three-person Election Oversight Committee appeared to [...]

New owners, almost all smiles
In case you haven’t been following along at home, here’s coverage of yesterday’s joint press conference by Save the Queen officials–the development consortium which bought the lease to operate the Queen Mary and 64 acres of surrounding land–and the City of Long Beach.

Save The Queen frontman denies any deal
Jeff Klein says he’s already contacted the Israel-based news organization Globes Online to tell them they’re wrong: there’s no deal with anyone to sell off any part of the RMS Queen Mary.
“You can’t sell what you don’t have,” Klein told The District.
Klein said Save The Queen is talking with [...]

Save The Queen frontman Jeff Klein, sounding exasperated and exhausted, continued to seek clarification Friday afternoon on a legal ruling that seems to give him only until the end of the day Tuesday to finalize his purchase of the Queen Mary lease.
“We’re trying to understand what the closing date should be — there are different [...]

Save The Queen frontman Jeff Klein was caught off guard this morning when he learned that his development consortium has only three business days — until the end of the day Tuesday, November 6 — to finalize its $43 million bid to purchase the lease to operate the Queen Mary and develop 64 acres of [...]

The complicated sale of the lease to operate and develop the Queen Mary resumed its slow and unsteady progress toward closure Thursday morning in bankruptcy court when Judge Vincent Zurzulo approved an unusual $1.15 million settlement of a dispute lodged by small contracting company AAC Shoreline — after disgruntled development company, Bandero LLC, withdrew its [...]

A company that insists it has been defrauded of development rights to the Queen Mary and surrounding acreage will be in Los Angeles bankruptcy court this morning to try to put another obstacle in the path of final sale of the lease to that property.
Bandero LLC says it has invested more than $12 million into [...]