Biggest Boat Bound for Miami?
America already has several aircraft carrier attractions: the Midway in San Diego, the Lexington in Corpus Christi, Texas, the Intrepid in New York, the (haunted) Hornet in Alameda, California, the Yorktown in Charleston, South Carolina -- and probably others as well (America has a lot of surplus flattops). Now a group of South Florida Navy buffs wants to bring the recently-mothballed U.S.S. John F. Kennedy into the mix, a carrier that makes the others seem quaint by comparison. At 1,052 feet long, the JFK easily beats any other attraction afloat, even the Queen Mary.
The problem with something so big is finding a place to put it. Paul Troxell, who heads the JFK Memorial Foundation, says that he's found the perfect spot: an empty rectangle of water just north of the American Airlines Arena on Biscayne Bay in downtown Miami. Indeed, size comparisons show that the JFK would just fit.
Troxell and his group want to turn that rectangle into the world's largest bathtub. It would be excavated and lined with concrete. After the JFK is floated into it, a massive wall would be built across its opening and all of the water would be pumped out. The ship's hull would be welded to huge beams anchored into the cement, essentially turning the carrier into a building, safe from hurricanes and tidal surges. Then the tub would be filled with fresh water, where scuba divers could frolic and tourists could examine the hull from a submerged plexiglass tunnel.
Troxell told us that the cost for the project would be around $50 million, a bargain compared to the start-up numbers that we've seen for some other proposed tourist attractions. The rectangle of water is already there, Troxell explains, and the military would probably chip in on the delivery costs, to avoid the expense of storing something as big as the Empire State Building.
Unfortunately, the mayor of Miami has reportedly been cool to the idea, principally because he feels that the ship would clash with the city's glitzy waterfront architecture. Troxell believes otherwise. "It's not going to be a gigantic hulk just sitting there," he told us. "It's not a big, dwarfing thing. It could be beautiful."
Troxell feels that if he can sway a few important people, the U.S.S. JFK will be a "destination attraction" in Miami by 2012. "All those people buying bay front condos -- they want to look at ships." [01/14/2008]Tourism News: Latest Headlines
