“That is really a bridge too far,” he said. “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?” Stephan Leewis, a member of the Rotterdam council from the environmental party GroenLinks, told the local broadcaster Rijnmond, which broke the news on Wednesday. That was hardly reassuring to some politicians. “We attach great importance to preserving employment,” she said, adding that the city would not cover the costs of removing and reassembling the bridge. On the other hand, our concern for De Hef,” Rotterdam spokeswoman Frances van Heijst told the Washington Post (which is owned by Bezos), to explain the thinking behind the decision. “On the one hand, economic importance, employment, due to the construction of this ship. That meant the bridge, which locals affectionately call “De Hef,” or “the lever,” has to be temporarily taken apart sometime this summer and then reconstructed once Bezos’s yacht leaves town. His vessel-estimated to cost about $500 million to build- includes three 229-foot masts, too tall to sail under the bridge, which has the height of a 13-story building and a clearance of 131 feet. It is a “must-remove” for Bezos, however. The bridge is one of Rotterdam’s best-known local landmarks, called a “must-see” by one tourist on Tripadvisor. That is in order for Bezos’s new 412-foot vessel-one of the biggest private yachts on the planet-to leave its construction site and set sail. In negotiations revealed this week, Rotterdam officials agreed to take apart (and later reassemble) the steel Koningshaven bridge that spans Europe’s busiest cargo port, and which has stood in place since 1927.
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