Buy hard

Jennifer Gould Keil

GIMME SHELTER

Bruce Willis is back on movie screens with “A Good Day to Die Hard” and he’s back on the Upper West Side, too.

Willis, who once lived on Central Park West with then-wife Demi Moore, is in contract to buy a co-op at the famed El Dorado building at 300 Central Park West for $8 million.

The three-bedroom, four-bathroom unit, which was listed for $8.695 million, offers plenty of space for Willis, wife Emma Heming and daughter Mabel Ray, who turns 1 in April. The living room, dining room and master suite face the park, and there’s also a “massive” windowed eat-in kitchen and a 38-foot formal gallery that’s “ideal for exhibiting art.”

FilmMagic

Bruce Willis

Getty Images

Meg Ryan

The building is a 1931 Art Deco structure created by architect Emory Roth. Amenities include a gym and a mini basketball court.

Levitt or leave it

Dede Sheoris-Levitt, ex-wife of hedge-funder Michael Levitt, has sold the gargantuan home she once shared with her husband at 4 Stone Tower Drive in Alpine, NJ, for $13.3 million — down from its $18.5 million asking price.

The 23,000-square-foot mansion comes with a gym, theater, two-lane bowling alley, nine-car garage, elevator, pool, spa, putting green and a tennis court. There’s also a 2,000-square-foot guest or staff house and a pool house.

The buyer is Joe Scott, who owns Mayrich Construction. Listing broker Dolores McCormack of Prominent Properties Sotheby’s International Realty declined to comment.

Scott has sold his home at 2 Margo Way in Alpine for $20 million to a mystery Russian buyer. Listing broker Rosemarie Campi of Prominent Properties Sotheby’s International Realty declined to comment.

We hear . . .

That music mogul Lyor Cohen is looking to buy a family-size residence on the Upper West Side. He recently checked out a $15.95 million unit at the Majestic at 115 Central Park West. He loves the neighborhood, our spies say, but not the layout of the unit he saw.

Fifth have

Billionaire Marc Rowan, co-founder of Apollo Global Management, and wife Carolyn have put their three-bedroom, 3 1/2-bathroom first-floor co-op at 927 Fifth Ave. on the market for $16 million.

They bought the space (which was previously owned by late plastic surgeon Robert Schwager, who had his office there) in May for $7.7 million. The unit has been converted into a 4,000-plus-square-foot, loft-style unit with a great room, Central Park views and 10-foot ceilings. There’s a pool table, a glass and stone bar and a “media wall.” The chef’s kitchen comes with a wine cooler and a sliding glass door, along with an “extra large” pantry.

It’s all set in a 12-story limestone-clad 1925 building with one apartment per floor — designed by Warren & Wetmore, the primary architects of Grand Central Terminal.

The listing agents are Douglas Elliman’s Kim Shepard-Fabrizi and Sandra Ripert (wife of Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert).

The Rowans aren’t leaving the building. In December, they bought a fifth-floor apartment from Claire Edersheim, the widow of financier Maurits Edersheim. They also own a sixth-floor spread in the building.

Meg’s moves

Meg Ryan’s uptown home hunt continues. The actress just returned to “You’ve Got Mail” territory when she saw a $8.75 million brownstone at 126 W. 87th St.

The residence, which dates back to 1888, features a front parlor with 12 1/2-foot ceilings. The top story includes an 18-foot ceiling, a skylight and front and back terraces. Listing broker Deborah Sabec of Town Residential declined to comment.

As Gimme Shelter previously reported, Ryan, who’s been renting in SoHo, recently had a broker inquire about a 907 Fifth Ave. apartment, as well.

Rest of the West

The last sponsor unit is now on the market at Extell Development’s 535 West End Ave. The full-floor condo is priced at $19.5 million and was previously packaged with an upper unit as a $37.5 million penthouse duplex, but the upper floor sold separately for $22 million.

Matt Damon (who at the time was living on a West 87th Street Belnord rental with his family) bid on the upper floor, but was outbid by a Wall Street family.

Brown Harris Stevens broker Lisa Lippman has the listing for the remaining unit.

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Bobby Flay’s Burger Palace coming to Dadeland as part of expansion wing

When Dadeland Mall opens its new expansion wing later this year, diners will be able to enjoy the first Bobby Flay Burger Palace in Florida and nearly a half dozen new dining options.

The highlight of the new two-story expansion is the outdoor terrace offering diners a view of the bustling Kendall Drive. This area aims to turn the mall into more of an entertainment destination, following a trend set years ago by others areas malls including Aventura Mall, Sawgrass Mills and Dolphin Mall.

The first phase of the 102,000 square foot expansion wing will open starting in May with the arrival of 18 new retailers, including Tommy Bahama, Hugo Boss, Microsoft, Stuart Weitzman, PUMA, Donald J Pliner, Porsche Design, Urban Outfitters, Express and Original Penguin.

The restaurants are expected to open in the fall.

The new wing, which was built on the site of the former Limited store location, is designed to open the mall up to Kendall Drive.

“It feels like a whole new Dadeland,” said Maria Prado, the mall’s general manager. “We’re going to have that entertainment component that we’ve been missing. This is going to take us to the next level and give people more reason to come and stay longer.”

Joining Chef Bobby Flay’s restaurant will be Aoki Teppanyaki, Balans, Earls Kitchen + Bar and Aroma Espresso Bar located on the ground floor. Aoki Teppanyaki is the first of a new concept by Kevin Aoki, the son of Benihana’s late founder Rocky Aoki. Earls is an upscale casual dining chain based out of Canada and this will be its first location on the east coast.

Aoki’s restaurant, which is designed to feel like a Kyoto-style Japanese Village, will include teppanyaki tables, a sushi bar and sake bar.

“It’s a tribute to my father and all his hard work in creating Benihana,” Kevin Aoki said. “I’m not trying to compete with Benihana. I’m trying to open a restaurant and create excitement using the things I’ve learned from my father and my experience.”

A spokesman for Bobby Flay said he chose Dadeland for his first Florida location because of the traffic and demographics in the area. This is the beginning of plans by Flay to expand Bobby’s Burger Palace to other locations in South Florida.

The other new retailers coming to Dadeland: Vince Camuto, Tesla Motors, Everything But Water, Fit2Run, babycottons, Luggage & More and ALO Diamonds.

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Michigan woman dies during Keys diving excursion

A Michigan woman died Tuesday while diving off Key Largo, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said.

Donna Hartson, 64, of Sterling Heights was aboard the commercial dive vessel Silent World 4 with her husband, Leroy, and six other divers, Deputy Becky Herrin said. They were diving to the Benwood, a wreck off Key Largo, between 2 and 3 p.m.

According to the vessel’s captain, the divers were in the water for about 40 minutes. They were getting ready to go to another location when Hartson surfaced and the captain saw her signaling for help.

When the vessel reached her, she didn’t respond. People aboard pulled her onto the boat, began CPR and called the U.S. Coast Guard to report the trouble.

When the Silent World 4 reached the Port Largo subdivision, it was met by deputies and paramedics. Hartson was taken to Mariners Hospital in Tavernier, where she was pronounced dead.

An autopsy was planned.

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Brill sold to tune of $185M

Lois Weiss

BETWEEN THE BRICKS

Eric
Hadar has signed a contract to buy the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway for $185 million.

The sellers are Ofer Yardeni and Joel Seiden’s Stonehenge Partners, along with Invesco of Texas.

Hadar and Abraham Merchant and Richard Cohn of Merchants Property Group, signed a contract to buy the building last week, sources said.

The direct deal is being completed without brokers and may have begun as a retail play.

Sources said the group intends to bring the 175,000-square-foot building back to its roots with pre-builts targeting budding music and entertainment companies. Colony Records recently vacated the retail portion of the building; with a spread from the basement to the third floor of more than 45,000 square feet, it could be the most valuable portion of the asset.

In its 1950s and ’60s heyday, the building’s offices were filled with agents, publishers and rehearsal studios.

Singer-songwriter Paul Simon still maintains his office there.

No one could be reached for comment at press time.

Once an active investor, Hadar previously owned both the Citigroup Building and the LVMH Building at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue.

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A downtown dorm currently used by Pace University is on the market through Jimmy Kuhn, David Kolan and Lawrence “Chip” Porter at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. The former office building at 55 John St., and its income stream, could bring in $90 million for seller Yitzchak Tessler.

The dorm is entirely leased to Educational Housing Services, which has an agreement to provide Pace with 285 fully furnished dorm rooms. Not like the dorm rooms you lived in years ago, these all have flat-panel TVs with built-in game consoles, small desks, captain’s beds and full-size refrigerators.

There is also a small H&R Block office on the ground floor for when the students graduate and finally earn some dough to pay back their loans.

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We just got a first look at the Real Estate Board of New York’s nominations for the most ingenious sales, leasing and financing deals of the year.

We’ll be reviewing the deals in more detail in The Post’s March 5 commercial real-estate special, and the coveted “Oscars” of the industry will be awarded on April 23.

The deals include: the sale of CUNY’s 20 East End Ave. and relocation to a tax-exempt office condo, submitted by Studley’s Ira Schuman, Daniel O. Horowitz and David Carlos; the sale of 88 Leonard St. by brokers Helen Hwang and Nat Rockett of Cushman & Wakefield; the purchase of a condominium by Y&R at 3 Columbus Circle by CBRE’s Mary Ann Tighe and Gregory Tosko; a flea market-to-flagship sale of 144 Spring Street by broker Christopher Owles of Sinvin Realty; the sale of 525 Broadway back to its original owner by ABS Partners Real Estate brokers Alan S. Cohen and Gregg L. Schenker.

Leases include: the pact for the New York Genome Center at 101 Ave. of the Americas by Bill Harvey of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank and Daniel Segal, now with Orchard Real Estate Partners; Chadbourne & Parke’s lease at 1301 Ave. of the Americas by Moshe Sukenik, Barry Gosin and Chris Mongeluzo of Newmark; leases at 11 Times Square by Jones Lang LaSalle’s Mitchell Konsker, Paul Glickman and Matthew Astrachan; the lease of newly built 33 Beekman St. by Pace University through Newmark’s David A. Falk and Kyle J. Ciminelli; the Havas lease in Hudson Square by the Newmark team of David A. Falk, Jason T. Greenstein and Frank Kajon; the Viacom renewal at 1515 Broadway by the CBRE team of Michael R. Laginestra, Scott L. Gottlieb and Andrew J. Sussman; and a lease for Times Square Capital at 7 Times Square from CBRE team Ben Friedland and Silvio Petriello.

Both sides of Morgan Stanley’s 11.2 million-square-foot lease at One New York Plaza were nominated. The tenant’s team was Barry M. Gosin, Brian S. Waterman and Romel Canete of Newmark, while the Brookfield Office Properties’ agent was Duncan McCuaig.

Finance entries included the financing for 837 Washington St. through HFF’s Evan Pariser; 50 Oceana Drive West in Brighton Beach by The Singer & Bassuk Organization’s Scott A. Singer and Jeffrey Moroch; 1515 Broadway by HFF’s team of Whitney Wilcox and Michael Tepedino; HSBC Tower’s refinancing by the Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group’s Shawn Rosenthal; and 542-580 Second Ave. through NY Urban’s Chris Lama.

Lois@Betweenthebricks.com

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South Florida group commits to investing in U.S. Century Bank

U.S. Century Bank has signed off on its deal to recapitalize with cash from a high-profile group of local investors, allowing the Doral bank to remain independent.

The investment team, led by brothers Jimmy and Kenny Tate of Tate Capital, Sergio Rok of Rok Enterprises and Jorge Perez of Related Group, has expertise in buying distressed assets and promises to fortify U.S. Century to give it a financial foundation for success.

“We believe that our group, coupled with the additional investors we’re bringing in, will prove to be the proper brain trust needed in order to clean up the past and build a beautiful bank in the future,” said Jimmy Tate, 49.

The “handpicked” group is composed of about 10 prominent South Florida business leaders with substantial experience, who will each be making a significant investment, said Tate, who did not yet have their approvals to name them all, but said he hopes to soon.

“They are the leading businessmen in South Florida, and they are philanthropic, and they have South Florida at heart,” he said. “And they are very excited about this endeavor because they believe, as I believe, that there is a strong demand for a well-capitalized community bank that serves the banking needs of the local community.”

As part of the deal, the group will pump $50 million in capital into U.S. Century, becoming majority owners. In addition, the group will pay about $90 million to buy certain loans, including all $98 million of U.S. Century’s non-performing loans. The deal will also provide for a negotiated amount of more than $5 million to be paid to the federal government for U.S. Century’s $50.2 million in TARP funds, said U.S. Century President and Chief Executive Carlos J. Dávila.

“I certainly think this will be a very positive transaction for all the major stakeholders, meaning the community, the shareholders and our employees,” Dávila said.

U.S. Century’s 441 existing shareholders will remain as stockholders, though their percentage of ownership will shrink. Those shareholders will have the option to invest additional capital along with the new group, Dávila said.

The deal is the culmination of years of searching for capital for struggling U.S. Century, whose agreement to be bought by C1 Bank of St. Petersburg was called off by C1 in December.

U.S. Century, a Hispanic-oriented bank that opened in 2002, has been operating under a regulatory consent order since June 2011, which has mandated that it raise capital, among other issues.

The new deal, which is now under a signed letter of intent, should bring the bank “close” to regulators’ requirement of an 8 percent capital ratio, Dávila said.

“For a bank that is in distress or under a consent order where there is a requirement to raise capital, the terms and conditions of this deal are extremely reasonable and fair for the existing shareholders,” he said.

Furthermore, U.S. Century, with $1 billion in assets and 24 branches, now will get a new shot at life as one of the only remaining locally owned community banks of its size. Others, like City National Bank of Florida and BankAtlantic have been sold in recent years to foreign owners or larger U.S. banks.

Tate and his team have been working on the deal since January, after first making an unsolicited offer while the C1 deal was under way.

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Lauderhill police identify women killed in weekend crash

Lauderhill police on Monday released the names of two women killed in a weekend crash.

The driver was identified as Marie Pierre, 56, and her passenger was Valerie Duncan, 52.

Both were taken to Broward General Medical Center where they were pronounced dead.

Police say the accident occurred at Oakland Park Boulevard and Northwest 56th Avenue when Pierre, driving a silver Toyota Rav4, apparently swerved to avoid another vehicle entering the intersection around 10:45 p.m. Friday.

Pierre lost control when her westbound vehicle struck a second car, then slammed into a large traffic signal pole near the waterfall in the northwest corner, according to Lauderhill Police.

The women were on their way to their jobs as nursing assistants at the Sunrise Rehabilitation Center in Sunrise.

“They had to be at work at 11 p.m.,” said Duncan’s husband Paget Duncan. “They had plenty of time. They were not speeding.’’

Duncan said police told him the car that entered the intersection did so because the traffic light was malfunctioning and did not change.

Investigators are asking anyone who witnessed the accident to contact the Lauderhill police at 954-497-4700.

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Bachelor Recap Sean's Sister Provides Perspective on Tierra

Apparently there is one girl whose words have weight enough to sway The Bachelor from his affections for Tierra, and that's his sister Shay.

One week prior to the all-important hometown dates, Sean flies his sister to St. Croix to help him work out his feelings for the remaining six. Harking back to her sage, sisterly advice before he embarked on his Bachelor adventure, Shay tells Sean not to "end up with a girl no one likes." The words strike a painful chord with him seeing as Tierra's alienation from the other ladies is no longer a secret.

Pics: 'The Bachelor' Scorecard (Did the Relationships Sizzle or Fizzle?)

Inspired to test his sister's intuition, Sean decides to introduce Tierra to his sibling, but when he arrives to the ladies' hotel, the resident mean girl is found weeping after an all-out war of words with AshLee. At first dismayed by her pain, Sean comes to realize the humane thing to do would be to send Tierra home, fearing she won't be able to handle the more stressful weeks ahead.

"I can't believe they did this to me!" are Tierra's departing words as she is sent packing. "I hope the girls got what they wanted."

During the final rose ceremony in St. Croix, Lesley is cut loose from the remaining five. Despite their incredible connection and friendship, Sean worries that the relationship had gone stagnant.

Pics: Meet 'Bachelor' Sean Lowe's Lucky Ladies!

A confused, crying Catherine takes Lesley's elimination especially hard as she believed that Sean and Les, in her opinion, were better suited for eachother than she will ever be with Mr. Lowe.

Next Monday on ABC, Desiree, Lindsay, Catherine and AshLee will get to introduce their maybe-husband-to-be to the family, but it seems the hometown dates don't go over as well for Des in particular, whose protective brother appears unwilling to accept her "playboy" boyfriend.

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Bus strike: ayor Mike wins

Michael Benjamin

This afternoon, it will be checkmate for the school-bus strikers. The strike essentially ends — thanks to the Bloomberg gambit.

The mayor played it perfectly, and willingly sacrificed pieces to achieve his endgame.

At midday today, the Office of Pupil Transportation will open the bid packages for the K-12 school-bus routes. It can start service under the new contracts before September — though not as soon as parents hope, since the contracts must go through the city’s lengthy review process. Still, those bids are what the strike was supposed to stop.

AP

Losers: Local 1181 boss Michael Cordiello (r.) with International ATU chief Larry Hanley.

But yesterday, in a bid to be competitive, several bus companies went to court to void the employee protections in current contracts and to halt the new bids.

If that suit fails, a mix of new and currently-contracted bus companies will likely win contracts. Meanwhile, a number of bus companies with current contracts will probably decline to submit bids, because their union contracts would leave them uncompetitive. Their unionized employees, now on strike, would be out of jobs as of June 30.

For these workers, the only rational decision will be to return to work. Already in the last few days, workers have crossed union picket lines to return to their jobs.

After today (assuming the bus companies’ suit fails), it will make sense for more striking drivers and attendants to return for their last few months of pay and benefits, especially their health-care coverage. And it makes even more sense for these workers to seek work with the new companies.

In a sense, the worker-protection bubble finally burst. Small bus companies and their workers are collateral victims; the worker protections put those companies, already operating on a slim margin, at a competitive disadvantage.

When the city, citing court rulings, put out for bid new bus contracts that didn’t require the employee protections (as these contracts had for 35 years), that didn’t mean the bus companies could break their contracts with the unions to provide those priveleges. That left them handicapped in bidding, since they’d have higher labor costs than firms without the generous protections.

To stay competitive, the companies needed the union to work with them to lower costs. But the union instead went on strike — trying to force Bloomberg to retain the protections, and even to get the state to pass a new law to undo the court ruling.

When the National Labor Relations Board this month failed to force even a temporary resolution favorable to the union, the end was in sight.

Mind you, Mayor Bloomberg sacrificed a number of chess pieces to achieve his endgame.

Parents, especially of special-needs children, are angry at him for four weeks of educational disruption. The stress on special-needs kids is incalculable. The city schools lose federal funding for students who couldn’t attend during the strike.

Bloomberg alienated the bus company operators — who feel caught in the middle of the dispute — by not paying them for service they didn’t (couldn’t) deliver during the strike.

Finally, after more than a decade of fairly good labor relations, he will be remembered for breaking one union’s hold on an industry.

Bloomberg’s bold gambit will benefit his successors, who won’t be saddled with needlessly high school-busing costs.

If the city’s lucky, the mayor in his final months in office will use similar gambits to tackle some of the much larger union-benefit issues that are consuming ever-larger chunks of the municipal budget.

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Green cards for sale at a South Beach hotel: Competition is on for EB5 investment visas

If David Hart gets his way, South Beach’s 42-room Astor Hotel will be on a hiring spree this year as it adds concierge service, a roof-top pool, an all-night diner, spa and private-car service available 24 hours a day.

New hires will be crucial to Hart’s business plan, since foreign investors have agreed to pay about $50,000 for each job created by the Art Deco boutique.

The Miami immigration lawyer specializes in arranging visas for wealthy foreign citizens under a special program that trades green cards for investment dollars. Businesses get the money and must use it to boost payroll. The minimum investment is $500,000 to add at least 10 jobs to the economy. That puts the pressure on Hart and his partners at the Astor to beef up payroll dramatically, with plans to take a hotel with roughly 20 employees to one with as many as 100 workers.

“My primary responsibility is to make something happen here over the next two years that will create the jobs we need,’’ Hart said a few steps away from a nearly empty restaurant on a recent weekday morning. “It’s all going to be transformed.”

Though established in the 1990s, the “EB5” visas soared in popularity during the recession as developers sought foreign cash to replace dried-up credit markets in the United States.

Chinese investors dominate the transactions, accounting for about 65 percent of the nearly 9,000 EB5 visas granted since 2006. South Korea finishes a distant second at 12 percent and the United Kingdom holds the third-place slot at 3 percent. If Latin America and the Caribbean were one country, they would rank No. 4 on the list, with 231 EB5 visas granted, or about 3 percent of the total.

Competition has gotten stiffer for the deep-pocketed foreign investors willing to pay for green cards. The University of Miami’s bio-science research park near the Jackson hospital system raised $20 million from 40 foreign investors under the EB5 program, most of them from Asia. The money went into the park’s first building; visa brokers are waiting to see if the second building will proceed so they can offer a new pool of potential green-card sales.

In Hollywood, the stalled $131 million Margaritaville resort had hoped to raise about $75 million from EB5 investors before ditching that plan last year to pursue more traditional financing. A retail complex by developer Jeff Berkowitz in Coral Gables also launched a program to raise $50 million in EB5 money for the project, Gables Station. Hart worked with other EB5 investors to back pizza restaurants in Miami and South Beach. A limestone mine in Martin County also was backed by EB5 dollars.

This year, the city of Miami itself is expected to get into the business by setting up an EB5 program to raise foreign cash for a range of city businesses and developments. The first would be the tallest building in the city — developer Tibor Hollo’s planned 85-story apartment tower, the Panorama, in downtown Miami.

With a construction cost of about $700 million, Miami’s debut EB5 venture hopes to raise about $100 million from foreign investors, said Laura Reiff, the Greenberg Traurig lawyer in Virginia working with Miami on the EB5 effort. “This is a marquis project,’’ she said.

The arrangement is a novel one for Miami, with the city planning to help a private developer raise funds overseas for a new high-rise. And it would allow Hollo and future participants to tout the city of Miami’s endorsement when competing with other Miami-area projects for EB5 dollars. “We will have the benefit of the brand of the city of Miami,’’ said Mikki Canton, the $6,000-a-month city consultant heading Miami’s EB5 effort. “A lot of these others are privately owned and they won’t have that brand.”

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Carnival cruise ship in Gulf of Mexico to be towed after engine fire

A Carnival cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico with 3,000 passengers onboard will be towed to port after an engine fire Sunday morning left it drifting, a cruise line official said,

The fire occurs in the engine room of the Carnival Triumph, which is owned by the Miami-based company.

The fire left the ship with no propulsion, the cruise line says, CNN is reporting.

There were no injuries reported. Passengers and crew have food, water and electricity from generators. Another Carnival ship, the Elation, is transferring more food and drinks onto the Triumph

The cruise ship was in waters off the Yucatan Peninsula, heading back to Galveston, Tx., when the fire occurred, said Astevia Gonzalez from the Carnival Cruises family support team.

The ship's automatic fire extinguishing system kicked in and soon contained the blaze.

The fire still left the ship passengers and 1,000 crew members drifting about 150 miles off the Mexican coast, the cruise line said in a statement.

"The ship's technical crew has determined the vessel will need to be towed to port," Carnival said around 7:30 p.m. ET Sunday, CNN said. "A tugboat is en route to the ship's location and will tow the vessel to Progreso, Mexico, which is the closest port."

According to Gonzalez, the ship is expected to arrive in port Wednesday.

After they are towed to Progreso, those aboard the Carnival Triumph will be flown back to the United States at no cost to them, the cruise line said.

They will also get a full refund, credit that can be used toward a future trip and reimbursement for all expenses — except casino and gift shop purchases — for their current trip.

The vessel's next two departures, scheduled for Monday and Saturday, have been canceled. Those slated to be on those trips will get full refunds and discounts toward future cruises, the cruise line said.

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