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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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A concrete magnate is seeking to stop the SS United States from being sunk off the coast of Florida so that it can be turned into a "floating ecosystem" in New York City.
The famed ship—which is larger than the Titanic and still holds the trans-Atlantic speed record for an ocean liner—was bought by Florida's Okaloosa County for $1 million. Officials are planning to sink it off the Gulf Coast and turn it into the world's largest artificial reef.
The 990-foot vessel was already supposed to have begun its journey south after spending years moored on the Delaware River in Philadelphia, but its departure has been delayed indefinitely.
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However, John Quadrozzi Jr., who runs a concrete empire and is the owner of the Gowanus Bay Terminal in Brooklyn, told New York City blog Gothamist that he is focused on coming up with a "compelling, realistic reason" for Florida officials to abandon their plan.
Quadrozzi said he has a 1,300-foot parking space for the vessel near the mouth of the Gowanus Canal and would like to turn the historic ship into a "floating ecosystem" focused on sustainability.
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"Coworking space, incubators. Preferably things that are more maritime and environmentally focused … The vessel is just filled with small spaces in it, which would be ideal for that type of use," Quadrozzi said.
"It gets built up in increments. There are residences. There are commercial spaces. There are industrial spaces."
Quadrozzi's backers include Dan McSweeney, who cofounded the SS United States Conservancy. He pitched a proposal to turn the ship into a floating affordable housing project on the Hudson River to a local community board last month, the Columbia University student newspaper Columbia Daily Spectator reported.
However, the SS United States Conservancy told Newsweek that such proposals are "unrealistic."
"It is deeply troubling that Dan McSweeney, formerly associated with the Conservancy, continues to mislead the public into thinking there is a viable path for redevelopment of the SS United States as a destination in John Quadrozzi's Gowanus Bay Terminal in New York or other location in the New York area," the conservancy said in a statement.
The conservancy added that it had spent more than a decade advancing the project in New York, pursuing "private pier owners, government agencies, elected officials, and public authorities at the local, state and federal levels," the statement said. "Regrettably, leaders from the State of New York and the City of New York did not embrace the project, despite the world-class destination envisioned and the thousands of jobs and significant economic benefits the project would have created."
The conservancy said that, "as a court-ordered deadline loomed," it vetted various plans for the purchase and relocation of the SS United States. "As we've confirmed previously, none of these recent prospects satisfied minimum due diligence or proved viable within our timing and logistical constraints," it added.
The conservancy also said that Quadrozzi "has never offered any financial commitment and, despite several recent attempts by the Conservancy to engage with him by phone or email, no substantive discussions took place."
It added: "With no viable options to move forward with redevelopment or relocation of the SS United States by a court-ordered deadline, the Conservancy's Board of Directors faced the painful but unavoidable choice between scrapping America's Flagship or converting her into an artificial reef in tandem with a land-based museum. We chose the latter as the more dignified path as it will still allow tens of thousands of visitors to experience the ship and museum each year.
"Efforts to push unrealistic proposals in the press are both disappointing and irresponsible and will do nothing more than sully the legacy of America's Flagship," the statement said.
Newsweek has contacted Quadrozzi, McSweeney and Okaloosa County for comment via email.
The ship had been scheduled to depart Philadelphia at low tide on November 15. But, days earlier, Okaloosa County officials announced that the departure had been delayed due to bad weather and "to ensure logistic details and procedures maintain ideal conditions for the move." A new date has not yet been announced.
When that day comes, multiple tugboats will tow the vessel to Mobile, Alabama, the county said in a press release. It will spend about a year there in preparation for its sinking off the Florida coast.
Contractors will remove hazardous material "to ensure this deployment is clean and not harmful to the environment it aims to benefit," officials said. Modifications will also be made to ensure that the vessel lands upright when it is sunk.
Okaloosa County officials said the exact location where the ship will be sunk has not yet been decided, but it is expected to be around 20 miles south of the Florida Panhandle region in the Destin-Fort Walton Beach area.
Quadrozzi said he is not confident that the ship will make it to Florida. "Taking a vessel like that magnitude out into the deep sea and around the horn of Florida, the likelihood of it even making it there is questionable," he told Gothamist.
Update 22/11/24, 6:15 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with a statement from the SS United States Conservancy.
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