New York Real Estate company RXR Realty collaborated with the SS United States Conservancy, and announced that the “SS United States” ocean liner will be repurposed as a hospitality and cultural place, permanently moored.
As Bloomberg reports, the company looks its shopping plan to New York, San Francisco and a half-dozen other U.S. cities, seeking a site for a roughly $500 million project that would include hotel rooms, restaurants and a museum celebrating the vessel’s history.
The vessel took its maiden voyage in 1952, representing postwar America’s technical and financial might, also setting a speed record on its first New York-to-London crossing, thanks to secret funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, which wanted a ship that could carry 15,000 troops across the Atlantic Ocean without refuelling in the event of war.
According to reports, the plan includes a 600,000 square feet available for development, while the area will also have a museum which will honor the ship’s history. RXR has already assembled an architectural and engineering team including Perkins Eastman Architects, HLW and Gibbs & Cox. Gibbs & Cox is the naval architect who originally designed the vessel, while an HLW partner on the team sailed on the SS United States voyage as a six-year-old.
