CAMDEN, N.J. Keeping battleship afloat for the public

Thirteen people have been laid off, and more cuts are expected.
CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) -- The USS New Jersey, the most decorated U.S. battleship and a Navy fixture from World War II through the first Gulf War, is in its second mighty battle since it was decommissioned for good in 1991.
From 1998 through 2000, political leaders and local boosters quibbled over whether the biggest of the Iowa-class battleships should spend its Naval retirement as a tourist attraction across from New York City or across from Philadelphia.
In a triumph for southern New Jersey -- a region that sees itself as an eternal underdog -- the Navy awarded the formerly nuclear warhead-equipped gray battleship to Camden in 2000.
It's been open to the public there as a floating museum for a little over two years now. But it has been drawing only a little more than half its initial goal of 300,000 visitors per year.
Financial trouble
The new battle is to attract more visitors and to keep it from sinking financially.
Troy Collins, the attraction's chief executive officer, says it's come to this for the ship: If it can get a state operating subsidy of $1.5 million -- roughly the size of the ship's deficit for each of its first two complete years -- it can become a far better museum.
If not, it will be a boat open to the public, but without many special programs or ambitions.
Last fall -- less than a year after a corporate reorganization -- the ship laid off 13 employees. More cuts will be made later this year to the museum's staff of 85 if state help doesn't arrive, Collins said.
Patricia Egan Jones, the Camden County surrogate and a co-chair of the Home Port Alliance, the nonprofit group that oversees the New Jersey, said unusually nasty weather over the past year has kept would-be visitors away, and the lack of state help has made the ship's money problems worse.
In 2002, the state canceled a promised $7.2 million operating subsidy. At that point, officials said they weren't upset with the state government, which was in a budget crisis, largely because the state had helped with moving the vessel from Washington state to its new home.
"We got the ship, and everyone believed the work was done," Collins said, "But the ship was just starting."
The USS New Jersey is one of the key pieces in efforts to turn Camden's former industrial waterfront into a Mecca for tourists. Before it came an aquarium, a minor-league baseball stadium, an amphitheater, a children's garden and a marina. An aquarium expansion, an IMAX theater and at least two restaurants are scheduled to open in 2005.
Other ventures
Camden is hardly the first to put a decommissioned Naval ship on its shore.
There are about 120 similar ship museums across the United States.
While it's rare for any to close because of financial problems, it's also hard for the ships to do well financially.
Jack Green, a public affairs officer at the Naval Historical Center in Washington D.C., said the cost of keeping the ships, well, ship-shape, with relatively small staffs and armies of volunteers, is a major obstacle.
"Historic ships are facing a lot of the problems that any museum is facing -- except that they're big hunks of metal living in saltwater," Green said.
Indeed, during World War II, more than 2,000 sailors were aboard to keep the New Jersey painted and repaired.
According to Green and others who follow the floating museum business, the ships that do well have a brisk rental business for parties and meetings, and they run programs that go beyond basic tours. Healthy government subsidies don't hurt.
"They appear to be doing things right," said Channing Zucker, the former executive director at the Virginia Beach, Va.-based Historic Naval Ships Association.
Programs
In the past year, the staff at the museum has produced an educational program that fits in with school curriculum requirements in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Like many retired ships, it offers overnight stays aboard the boat. But unlike others that try to sell that program mostly to Scout troops, the New Jersey also has a family sleepover program.
The museum section below the deck has been adding exhibits.
There are plans to put in a naval plane simulator later this year.
And in a nod to the older customers who come by the busload in the summer, the boat began hosting a USO-style revue last year.
The museum also has plans to offer self-guided tours for less than the $12.50 per adult, 11/2-hour basic tour.
State Assemblyman Joseph Azzolina, R-Monmouth, began trying to get the New Jersey to New Jersey since then-Gov. Brendan Byrne appointed him to chair a state commission with that goal about a quarter-century ago. The ship, then decommissioned, was called back to duty to serve in Beirut and the first Gulf War.
When it was finally taken out of service for good, Azzolina and his commission recommended the ship be docked in Bayonne.
Now, one reason for the ship's early struggles, Azzolina said, is that it doesn't have the New York City-area population base -- which it would have had in Bayonne -- to pull visitors from.
Azzolina is still the chairman of the Battleship New Jersey Foundation, which has made grants to the ship. He said there's no gloating among that group about the ship's struggles down south.
"I don't allow it," he said. "The ship is here. It's in New Jersey. We got to bring her home."