In early October, the headline in the Philadephia Inquirer was Is the S.S. United States headed toward the scrap yard?. After years of attempting to save the iconic cruise ship, the SS United States Conservancy announced that the SS United States, the fastest ocean liner ever built, might be “lost by the end of October.” The group has spent years attempting to find a developer to convert the 1951-built liner to a hotel, casino, museum, or some other form of tourist attraction. The ship has been sitting at a berth in Philadelphia for the past 19 years and is costing $60,000 per month in berthing fees. Now, a new berthing offer has emerged which may offer a reprieve for the ship.
John Quadrozzi Jr., owner of the Gowanus Bay Terminal in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, has offered a rent-free berth at his facility to the SS United States to allow time to work on the development plans. There are still obstacles to the plan, not the least of which is raising the estimated $2 million dollars that it would cost to tow the ship from Philadelphia.
If the ship does move to Red Hook it will be very close to its original berth on the Hudson River. As noted by New York Magazine, “This may be the first recorded case of an elderly New Yorker moving back from Philadelphia because the rent is cheaper here.“
Why does it cost $60,000 a month to keep the ship in Philly? It’s at an old pier that has no practical use these days.
My other question is how the change in environment will affect the life of the hull. The water it’s in now is fresh to brackish, and at Red Hook it’s pretty much ocean salinity.
Loujaine will have company!
Good luck finding $2 Mil to move it.
Well, that’s ONE way to get someone else to dredge your terminal’s silted-up berths for free. And thank goodness, too. What Red Hook really needs is another derelict ship shedding toxic paint and property values all over the place. Keep the neighborhood affordable, right? Guy’s the neighborhood junk collector. I guess the two POS rotten condemned ships and the rat-infested unused grain elevator at his floating graveyard aren’t enough to keep him happy. I know the neighbors just LOVE having an industrial hell for a view out their window. How truly good to offer to make Red Hook look even more awful. As it is, anyone wants to walk by his yard is already instantly mindful that they need a tetanus shot.
Not sure what that guys ranting about. I went on an Open House NY tour of the place and it’s one of the cleanest industrial facilities I’ve ever seen, teaming with all sorts of green industry, including what he refers to as a rotten ship which is Brooklyn’s only water fed slag terminal, a byproduct of steel manufacturing that replaces cement, and has been used on some of NY’s most premier projects including the Freedom Tower.
And if there are any rats, they must be coming from the surrounding Park which is strewn with debris every weekend from park lovers, otherwise the vermin beasts would starve as you could eat off the pavement.
As for the Grain Elevator, it doesn’t get any cooler, it’s one of the most sought after spots for movie shoots and is a back drop for huge waterfront music festivals, and notforprofit dance productions, plays and even an opera aboard a tall ships for two years running – I’m told that was free space as well. I guess one can never give enough.
Sounds like this guy just wants more of the same old gentrification and displacement happening everywhere else. However, this place looks like somewhere he’ll take his bitterness to the grave or maybe even the bottom of the ocean, that is if we’re lucky.
Bring on the SS United States for the rest of us that want the waterfront for something other than private housing for the city’s most affluent.
And yo Bob at the top, the Gowanus is brackish and starved of oxygen by the pollution. It’s a little thing the EPA calls Superfund.
After all these year they are so close and yet so far. I’ve been following this story closely. Two outspoken supporters Billie Jean King Bill Clinton. Both worth millions. Put your money where your mouth is. Each chip in a million. Get her to New York. Major banks in New York. Sounds like this developer is serous. Grant him a loan. Sounds like he’s good for it.
Follow up response to Bob,s October post. This ship made many crossing across the sea. The hull is partly aluminum. It was meant to sit in sea water. It should be fine. It’s also been found to structurally sound