Investors
make last-ditch effort to save ship from scrapping
As she sits tied up at a
Port Colborne scrapping yard, Captain John’s floating restaurant is yet again
drawing a crowd.
A Boston-Miami investor
group has offered about $100,000 to save the former Toronto tourist attraction
from being cut up into recyclable pieces. And they aren’t alone.
One person has even
inquired over what it would take to get the 90-metre ship, the Jadran, a new
engine and put it back in business — a $10 million to $15 million proposition.
“I’ve probably talked
four or five people out of being interested, just to do them a favour, really,”
says veteran ship scrapper Wayne Elliott, who oversaw the towing of the ship
from Toronto’s waterfront last month after years of legal battles over its
fate.
“We’ve heard from a
number of people and with some, it seems to be just emotion and not really well
thought-out. Many don’t even have a final plan or a final destination for the
ship.”
But some, like
Boston-based John Scales, do. And there’s nothing in the contract that
Elliott’s Marine Recycling Corporation has with Ports Toronto, Waterfront
Toronto and condo developer Cityzen — worth an estimated $500,0000 — that says
the ship has to be scrapped.
Marine Recycling was simply contracted to remove the Jadran
from Toronto’s waterfront, where it was a fixture for 40 years.
Scales is part of a three-person group of marine enthusiasts
that has been trying to buy the Jadran for more than a year now. It had offered
Ports Toronto $3,000 for the rusting ship, largely because of the high costs of
moving it to drydock, before adding on the millions needed in restorations.
But now that Elliott’s Marine Recycling Corporation has done
the heavy lifting — towing Captain John’s on May 28 to its Port Colborne
scrapyard — Scales’ group has upped its price and is more determined than ever
to give the ship yet another life, this time as a restaurant or entertainment
venue.
The group already had three Ontario waterfront communities
and about a dozen in the U.S. express interest in making a home for the ship
once it’s restored, says Scales.
The investor group envisions a two-stage restoration — the
first to get the three upper decks back in shape as an entertainment venue, the
second to find some sort of use for the lower decks, which used to contain
sleeping cabins in the days when the Yugoslavian ship was part of a luxury
cruise line.
“We already have two good restaurant firms interested in
leasing it for five years,” Scales added in a telephone interview after
recently driving to Port Colborne from Boston to take yet another look at the
ship.
“Captain” John Letnik has already offered to help out, in a
bid to save his life’s work from destruction.
“I got as close as I could,” said Scales, of the ship, where
crews have had a more challenging time than expected removing all the asbestos.
“It’s sitting lower in the water (because of ballast Marine Recycling added to
boost its towing stability) and looks longer and leaner.”
Elliott said his office has also had lots of calls from
folks looking to buy mementos or artifacts from the ship now that it’s in “the
funeral parlour of the shipping industry.”
“Obviously, if something still has good value, it does seem
a bit of a shame to scrap it,” said Elliott, who’s been overwhelmed by the
unusual outpouring of affection for a ship days away from the end of its life.
“I’m
not saying this is a top candidate (for saving from the scrap heap.) My
personal belief is likely none of these ideas could work out in time. So we’re
carrying on with the next steps in the absence of something that sounds
viable.”
Source: the star. 9 June 2015
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