Riverboat restaurant starts journey for a $2M makeover

COVINGTON, Ky. (AP) — A 72-year-old riverboat that’s become one of the best-known floating restaurants on the Ohio River across from Cincinnati left Saturday for the start of a $2 million renovation.

The Mike Fink, a 200-foot-long former steam-powered tow boat with a signature red paddlewheel, headed southeast for a 160-mile trip to South Point, Ohio, where McGinnis Inc. planned to install a new welded steel hull.

“If you’re a history nut, this was the way — before planes, trains, automobiles, buses — this is the way people got around,” said Alan Bernstein, co-owner of the restaurant.

The restaurant, which was being towed by two escort boats, was scheduled to arrive in South Point on Tuesday, Bernstein said. The trip had been scheduled to leave earlier this month but operators had to wait for the Ohio River to recede so that smokestacks wouldn’t hit bridges along the way.

The makeover is intended to restore some of the boat’s glitz.

After getting a new hull, the Mike Fink will return to its spot at the Covington, Ky.

Bernstein hopes to have the restaurant reopened by Labor Day.

The boat, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was built by Dravo Corp. in 1936 at Neville Island, Pa., according to records. It was christened the John W. Hubbard and started its career as a tow boat on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, pushing coal and oil barges.