BATON ROUGE — More cruise ships are expected to dock downtown after a major river cruise line agreed to invest in and renovate the City Dock along the Mississippi River.

The dock, commonly referred to as the Paperclip Dock, sits between the USS Kidd and the Louisiana Art & Science Museum. American Cruise Lines has entered into a partnership with the East Baton Rouge Metro Council to renovate and lease the dock for the next two decades.

American Cruise Lines and many other cruise ships already dock in Baton Rouge, but this partnership, according to the Mayor-President's office, comes with additional benefits for the city-parish. Mayor-President Sid Edwards said he anticipates more than 16,000 additional passengers per year can be expected to dock downtown.

In the fall, American Cruise Lines partnered with the city-parish. According to the publicly available draft of the Cooperative Endeavor Agreement, American Cruise Lines agreed to pay the city $2 million dollars, and that money will be used to pay for dock repairs. Each year, the cruise line is expected to pay $4 per passenger who uses the dock annually.

"This is going to be huge," Mayor-President Sid Edwards said. "And there's more work to be done."

According to Lon Vicknair, the mayor-president's chief of staff, the dock is outdated and hasn't been tended to in twelve years.

Suzanne Rollins has spent her entire life in Baton Rouge and says she loves downtown Baton Rouge. She remembers a time when Third Street was booming. Rollins' grandmother owned a hat shop there.

"I'm really excited that the rest of the world will see Baton Rouge," Rollins said.

Rollins says she takes cruises out of Baton Rouge frequently, and when she saw the media set up and the mayor's announcement, she wanted to talk to WBRZ about why she's excited for the change, and she wants others to love the Capital City as much as she does.

"When we are cruising, people notice that we're from Baton Rouge and say, 'Wow, we love Baton Rouge. We love the excursions.'"

Rollins hopes that those not from Baton Rouge take a piece of the city with them.

There is additional work that needs to be done to the dock, according to the mayor's team, and they hope this is the first of many downtown renovation projects.

American Cruise Lines has actively visited the city for years, after adding Baton Rouge as a port of call for its American Song vessel in 2018. During the COVID-19 pandemic, dockings were canceled and returned a year later.