Rotterdam refuses to dismantle city's iconic bridge to let Bezos's yacht through

A curious case has been in the news these days in Rotterdam, the Netherlands: the Dutch city has in fact refused to dismantle part of the Koningshaven bridge, but better known as “De Hef,” to allow the passage of a 127-meter-long luxury megayacht built in a city shipyard for billionaire Jeff Bezos, patron of Amazon. Overturned, then, was the decision of a public official who had given approval in February when the Oceanco shipping company sought permission to see part of the historic bridge dismantled to allow the $500 million yacht to reach the open sea.

However, the case had aroused great scandal. The citizens of Rotterdam immediately saw it as a matter of principle: dismantling the top part of the bridge would be a technically minor undertaking, and what’s more, the costs would be covered by Oceanco. And of course, when operations were over, the company would put everything back in place, within a couple of days. Especially since De Hef is a disused bridge: in fact, it was built in 1927 to the design of architect Pieter Joost as a railroad bridge on the Breda-Rotterdam line, and it remained in service until 1993, when it was abandoned and it was proposed for demolition, but residents protested since the bridge had meanwhile become a symbol of the city, and De Hef remained where it is. Indeed, it was even restored in 2014, although operations involved dismantling the bridge, which was reinstalled in February 2017. Moreover, since 2000 it has been classified as a "Rijksmonument," a national monument.

In short, money cannot everything: this is the value to which citizens and administration strictly adhered. “Matter of principle,” former city councilor Stefan Lewis reiterated to the New York Times, which detailed the affair. “What can you buy if you have unlimited money? Can you bend every rule? Can you dismantle monuments?” For the New York Times, it was almost a clash of civilizations: on one side the billionaire alone with the power of his money, on the other a society, the Dutch, that “prefers modesty to extravagance, community to the individual, fitting in to standing out.” Of course, even in the Netherlands there is a certain imbalance in the distribution of wealth (the New Yorker newspaper recalls that, for one dollar earned by an average worker, a CEO in the Netherlands earns 171), but the substantial difference from other countries, such as the United States, lies in the fact that in the Netherlands the rich do not flaunt their money, in the same way that the powerful tend not to make their position conspicuous.

For now, therefore, Rotterdam will not dismantle the bridge, which will remain in place intact. And Bezos will have to find other ways to get the yacht off the site.

Pictured is the Hef bridge. Photo by Steven Lek

Rotterdam refuses to dismantle city's iconic bridge to let Bezos's yacht through

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