It was two years ago news first broke that SNL cast members and Staten Island natives Colin Jost and Pete Davidson had purchased a Staten Island Ferry in hopes of turning it into an entertainment venue. Since then, various reports have surfaced of no progress being made, of rats and asbestos in the boat, and even Davidson himself claiming he made the purchase while stoned and that it had left him “in the hole.”
Built in 1965, the boat was decommissioned and auctioned off by the city for $280,100. But Davidson and Jost didn’t foot the bill alone: They had joined up with Paul Italia, co-founder of NYC comedy club The Stand, and a fourth partner.
Curbed has now tracked down that fourth partner, Ron Castellano, to finally get some answers on what’s going down with the ship. The good news is, they are making progress after all. It just might take a while.
Castellano’s architecture firm, Studio Castellano, lists the “JFK Ferry” project on its website as having a $34-million budget. Where’s all that money going, you ask? Design work is still being done, but the current plan calls for six bars, two restaurants, outdoor space, a floor of hotel rooms, and two venue spaces that can also be combined into a single large one.
When it’s done, the boat may even bounce around the Eastern Seaboard, being towed between Miami and New York. (The engine doesn’t work, and there are no plans to fix it.)
Jost and Davidson remain involved in the project, giving input and meeting with their partners anywhere from twice a week to once every few months.
Castellano concedes that storing the ferry while all this work gets done is an expensive undertaking, but he seems confident it will get done eventually. It’s unclear when exactly that might be, but he notes that his most known project, the Nine Orchard Hotel, took twelve years to complete.
At 277 feet long and boasting 65,000 square feet of space, the ferry is one-and-a-half times the size of that hotel.
