The story in February had gone global and made a lot of waves.
A Dutch superyacht maker, Oceanco, sought a major change to the Koningshaven bridge, known as De Hef, a landmark structure that spans the Meuse river in Rotterdam.
This historic bridge had to have its central section temporarily removed to enable a superyacht commissioned by Jeff Bezos, the founder and former CEO of Amazon (AMZN), to pass under it.
Bezos’s boat, now called Y721, is being built in the neighboring city of Alblasserdam. It needs to pass through Rotterdam to make it to the North Sea or English Channel -- but it’s too tall for the Koningshaven Bridge.
The 417-foot-long, 130-foot-high, three-mast boat will cost Bezos an estimated $500 million. It will be the world’s biggest sailing yacht, according to Boat International.
Oceanco's request to the city of Rotterdam seemed to have been accepted -- but ultimately the company decided not to apply to take down part of the bridge, according to the Dutch news website Trouw (the report is in Dutch).
Trouw used freedom-of-information legislation to find out more about the plan, and says Oceanco was so shocked by the February outcry that it has changed its mind.
In a statement, Oceanco said it "values the privacy and confidentiality of its clients and prospective clients and therefore does not comment on individual projects nor persons purported to be involved with our projects."
Threats
Shipyard employees felt threatened and the company feared it would be vandalized, according to the Trouw report. The city of Rotterdam had cited the threats as an argument not to make all the documents public.
The news of this about-face provoked plenty of mocking comment on social media.
"Best decision from Rotterdam. Jeff Bezos has to dismantle his boat, Pack it up and rebuild it," one Twitter user posted.
"Bezos’ is just sad because he has to turn his boat around now, as the Netherlands decided they will NOT in fact remove bridges so his boat can go through," another user said.
"The good news Mr. Bezos is that you can still take your giant boat out for very short trips," commented another user.
This historic monument of a bridge has been in place since 1927 and is one of the world's best examples of railway bridges from that era.
From 2014 to 2017 the central part of the bridge had been removed for renovation. During the inauguration of the renovated bridge, the city assured the people of Rotterdam that the bridge would no longer be dismantled.
The question of how Bezos will get his boat out to the world remains open.
