EVANSVILLE, Ind. — A large crowd of USS LST 325 supporters and veterans crowded along the walls of the City Council meeting Monday night waiting for the board’s approval to relocate the 75-year-old warship.
Many supporters were directed to wait in the hallway due to overcrowding.
After a large number of speakers gave their support to relocate the LST from Marina Pointe to Downtown Evansville, the council voted 8-1 to do so at a cost of $2.76 million.
Supporters smiled and cheered when the final vote was announced.
This will kick-off the “engineering and construction of the LST new dock and visitors center at Tropicana Riverfront Plaza,” according to city documents.
Darren Moore Morley, vice president of architecture for Morley and Associates, said advertising for construction bids would go out twice within the first two weeks of September. All bids would be due around October 1. After a bid is approved, construction would begin in October, he said.
If the project wraps up in late spring or early summer, then LST would officially relocate during the 75th anniversary of D-Day, Moore-Morley said.
While most Council members said yes to the relocation, one opposed the idea.
2nd Ward City Councilwoman Missy Mosby, the lone opposing vote, requested the Council hold off voting for the relocation until more information was presented.
“I think it’s a great opportunity,” Mosby said during the meeting. “I just feel like we have some unanswered questions that need to get answered.”
Mosby is concerned with funding a large project so quickly without adequate funding details pertaining to the old dock and other upcoming projects, stating, “We also have to look at what can we afford.”
“There’s a lot of things that we need and use that Riverboat money for,” Mosby said. “For me, I just felt like I was going in with blinders on and an open checkbook, and that’s not how I feel my constituents want me to run the day-to-day business operations of our city.”
Prior to the vote, Mayor Lloyd Winnecke said the LST draws about 10,000 visitors annually.
Winnecke said to Council, “It’s pretty easy to anticipate that attendance figure will easily double in year one. They have a shared parking agreement that will be in place between Tropicana and LST so we suspect that many of the same patrons who would come to visit the LST might also visit the casino — which would make a definite win-win for everybody involved.”
City administration filed a finance ordinance on July 18 to transfer nearly $2.76 million from the City’s Riverboat Fund to the Port Authority-Riverboat entity, which works on river projects for the city.
The nearly $2.8 million fund appropriation would come from the Riverboat fund, which consists of Tropicana’s one-time lease advancement deal and riverboat revenues. The Riverboat fund is used to fund capital projects around the city and purchase large items, city officials confirmed.
Deputy Mayor Steve Schaefer said riverboat funds paid for a new fire truck, snow plow, parks’ mowers, weather sirens, police cars and safety vests in 2018 alone.Â
“The city is fortunate to have many sources of funding for various projects, programs and services,” Schaefer said.Â
According to the mayor’s presentation, the total cost to relocate LST is nearly $3.9 million. With $1.1 million in diverse funding, the remaining cost is $2.76 million.
The Courier and Press reported in February that the Convention & Visitors Bureau endorsed a $175,000 grant for the relocation. Tropicana also contributed $1 million toward the relocation in 2015, according to City Controller Russ Lloyd Jr. The LST board is also contributing $175,000.
While some in the community have said allocating nearly $2.8 million to relocate a ship seems steep, the city spent about $3 million in 2005 on LST’s dock and barge set-up at Marina Pointe. Schaefer said the city also pays $40,000 in rent annually to the Riecken family, the owners of the site.
LST board member Chris Donahue was pleased with the Council’s decision and hopes to relocate LST by July 2019.
“I’ve been on the board for about six years,” he said. “I started working on this with the mayor in July 2012. I was just hoping, ‘Please make this happen, somebody.’ I don’t want this ship to go anywhere else.”
No visitors spoke in opposition Monday evening.
