Boatwatcher's paradise
Possible Iannucci merger with Maritime Museum just a start

by Steve Hopkins The Kingston Times  February 3, 2006

Brooklyn/Kingston resident Robert Iannucci's fledgling Kingston Maritime and Transport Museum and the Hudson River Maritime Museum are in talks to either merge or affiliate, said the developer this week. And what may come of the merger is sure to be bigger and better than the sum of its parts, at least as they exist today. Think of nearly the entire Rondout waterfront as a veritable maritime theme park and museum, with a fleet of vintage tugboats protected by a fleet of World War II-era torpedo-toting PT boats, all of which have been lovingly refurbished in an old-school working repair facility open to the public so that visiting throngs can see how they don't build them like they used to - except in Kingston.
Anyone closely monitoring the downtown purchases made by Iannucci and company, anyone who has seen his preliminary plans so far and who knows of his affinity for old boats and historiana could have put two and two together and seen it coming. I mean, there's already a Hudson River Maritime Museum on the waterfront - it's been there for 20 years or so. So what's going to happen to that venerable but troubled museum when a guy who's got it all together starts up another bigger, better maritime-related museum just three doors down?
Punt, that's what.
According to Iannucci, he was approached some time ago by the Maritime Museum folks. "First of all, we're starting a museum that is totally separate and distinct from the Hudson River Maritime Museum," said Iannucci. "It's the Kingston Maritime and Transport Museum. Those papers have already been prepared. The headquarters are going to be the Cornell Building. ... The Hudson River Maritime Museum people have asked us to allow them to merge with us, or in some other way, to have us affiliate with them so that we could rescue them from their current financial situation. We have had a number of meetings with them ... and they've asked us for a proposal and we're preparing one now that will be submitted to them sometime in the next few days."
The meetings were attended by David Palmquist, head of the Chartering Office of the New York State Department of Education in the New York State Museum. Simply stated, Palmquist is the man who holds the Hudson River Maritime Museum's fate in his hands, and has for the nine years he's been in the job. Due to its well-known list of troubles, which according to one knowledgeable individual include carrying a $200,000-and-rising debt load and a revolving-door executive directorship, the museum has never qualified for a permanent charter and has depended on the extremely patient Mr. Palmquist to extend its temporary charter every few years - something he hasn't seen fit to do since its recent spate of troubles last summer. Palmquist, who monitors and certifies 1,400 or so institutions statewide, said of Kingston's beleaguered museum: "Since early on I've watched the museum, and basically the cash flow is an issue. The amount of income has always been an issue: not quite enough money to run the operation, and their have been resignations or firings of directors, and just about all of them have spoken to me. Plus I've had complaints from the public over all this time. So I started meeting with Scott Johnson, the president, last summer, and with the board many times and talking about Rob Iannucci's proposal for a new museum. And the Board of Regents always has the discretion to give a charter for a new museum if it's sufficiently distinct from existing museums.
"And now there's a new president, his name is Dr. John Weeks, known as Jack Weeks, and I'm going to sit down with him, just the two of us, and talk about where he sees the museum going," added Palmquist. "That, and meet some new board members. Two of them are associated with the Clearwater. We'd prefer that all the parties involved agree on one course of action; that there be consensus. We've had museums divide before, we've had situations where we've chartered and incorporated something nearby another one. Some of it's been friendly, some of it hasn't been friendly. There are a limited number of charters available in a particular location or for a particular subject. It's all at the discretion of the Regents. But what I want to emphasize is that whatever happens in Kingston, I'd like everyone to be pretty much in agreement."
If they are in agreement, whatever that turns out to be, it would be doubtless benefit the Maritime Museum and the Rondout waterfront. "We're not trying to take over anybody," said Iannucci. "We want to emphasize this. If the museum decides that they want to merge with us, we'll be happy to do so. And if the museum decides that they want to attempt to operate on their own, we'll be happy to cooperate with them in every way. Our objective is to enhance the waterfront, to create a win-win situation for everybody, and to increase the opportunities for everybody along the waterfront."

Fleet Obsolete
Iannucci's plans so far for his own museum complex already include a number of floating assets. There is PT 728, which will spend part of the year here in Kingston. There are four or five more PT boats slated to be brought to Kingston, restored in the Cornell Building's working repair shop and operated as a fleet. "It will be the only PT boat fleet anywhere in the world," said Iannucci. "It will be known as Fleet Obsolete (our motorcycle racing team was called Team Obsolete.) Torpedo boats that are going to be fully operational and restored to their original design during World War II, with the original engines. We've already acquired a batch of original engines and we're acquiring more."
There will also be a fleet of vintage tugboats, including Iannucci's own 1955 Army tug, the Gowanus Bay, and all of Steve Trueman's North River Tugboat Museum vessels, which include the 1886 tug Susan Elizabeth; the 1896 tug Catawissa (Iannucci likes to call it the Catawumpus); the 1930 tug K Whittelsey; the 1957 tug Frances Turecamo; the 1938 tug Chancellor; a 1916 floating dry dock; and a 1930 Pennsylvania Railroad barge (recently employed in a History Channel film shoot about the Pinkerton uprising). "We also have a vintage Chris Craft sea skiff from 1957," said Iannucci.
"Another thing that we're doing is teaching wooden boat repair and wooden boat building," he added, referring to Mark Dupre and Wayne Bartow's Rondout Community Boatbuilding and Restoration Shop for area youth. "And that's already started. Those classes are being taught in the Cornell Building now.
"And of course there's the Cornell Building itself, which is an extremely historic building," said Iannucci. "We intend to put in a very significant vintage boat restoration facility - huge - where we get funding from the state and where we give apprentice programs to Sea Scouts from all over New York. Because most of the Sea Scout troops don't have any boats. And we're going to do that in such a way that the public can actually watch the restoration going on. We're also being approached by a number of different people who want to donate artifacts and various exhibits to the museum."
Planning of the Kingston Maritime and Transport Museum has been going on for more than a year, according to Iannucci, and with or without the Maritime Museum's participation, is going forward. "In a few months, or maybe less, we're going to start the renovation on the Cornell Building," he said.
As for other plans along the waterfront, Iannucci gave some intriguing highlights. "We're trying to do the right thing here. Our plans include a lot of open space and a lot of public access to the waterfront and a public walkway along the waterfront. And the streets that now end at East Strand, we're going to continue them up to the water. You've got Abruyn and four or five other streets there. There will be some buildings along the water, but they're going to be interrupted by open space.
"We have the best interests of Kingston at heart," said Iannucci. "We'd like to distinguish ourselves from other developers, in that our primary objective is not to see how many condos we can stuff into a given space. On the East Strand, our primary emphasis is going to be on historic maritime and a marina. If we put any housing on the East Strand, it's not going to be very much. We think the guys who are doing Sailor's Cove and The Landing are putting in more than enough housing for everybody."
Speaking of Sailor's Cove, Iannucci said he has been approached by brokers to buy out 771 Polaris Liability Ltd. of Ohio, which is set to begin the approval process for construction of 369 housing units, a 45,000-square-foot commercial building and 9,000 square feet of office space. "To be honest with you, I'm not really interested," said Iannucci. "I would prefer to spend my energies on historic maritime because it's a lot of fun. We are going to do residences at Island Dock, but they're going to be in conjunction with waterfront slips, and there will be an emphasis on wooden boats and things like that. Just the idea of a housing complex with no other hook to it is not something that I find particularly interesting.
"It has to be fun," concluded the developer. "My involvement here is based on the fact that these are fun projects, and they should be fun for the people of Kingston as well as for me. We hope to be able to provide jobs, to provide recreation and to make it a destination for people to have a reason to come to Kingston year-round."

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