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United States cruise ship going 'condo'Luxury Nner United States to return to sea as a condominiumARLINGTON, Wash. (AP) - The S.S United States will return to sea with a new look financed in a novel way, says owner Richard Hadley. The luxury liner is going condo, with staterooms going for as much as $149,500.Hadley — who lives in this farming community near the foothills of the Cascades when he’s not building condominiums in Hawaii or office buildings in Seattle — hopes the 990-foot ocean liner will become “the greatest cruise ship in the world ”The ship, the last luxury liner to fly the U.S. flag, was placed in service in 1952 and sailed for 17 year; before its owners defaulted on a federal mortgage and the government seized the property. Now it’s in mothballs in Norfolk, Va.Hadley bought the ship a year ago through his newly created corporation. United States Cruises Inc., for a $500,000 down payment toward its $5 million price. That was a steal, he says, because the liner cost $80 million when it was built, and building it today would cost $400 million.The company will spend another $30 million to $35 million on refurbishing Below decks, the ship will be transformed into a one-class — first-class — cruiser for 1,300 passengers instead of the 2,000 it was designed to carry.“We don’t want a pack-’em-in operation,’’ Hadley says. “We’ll have the lowest passenger population for a ship of our size by far. If a person likes to cruise and is affluent, it’s the only thing that makes any sense.”Passengers could dine in their choice of six restaurants, swim in three pools, play racquetball on two courts or lob tennis balls on the only full-size court afloat.To finance refurbishing, Hadley plans to sell one-sixth of the ship s space as, in effect, timeshare condominiums.Investors, who would be members of the United StatesCruising Society, could buy staterooms ranging in price from $11,500 to $149,500Members would have exclusive use of the rooms two weeks each year for 20 years — guaranteeing future vacations at current prices — and travel at 40 percent of the published public fare. Members could spend as many as 200 days cruising at the reduced rate on a space available basis.Hadley said 100 memberships had been sold or were“in the works” and expects his regular prices to be competitive - somewhere around $165 a day, perhaps.The ship, which will be fueled by a liquid converted from coal, will spend half its time sailing between Los Angeles and Honolulu and half on voyages to such ports as Stockholm. Singapore and Rio de janiero.The ship will carry an allAmerican crew “I think a lot of people feel as I do. a lot of people would prefer to be on a U.S. ship,” he says.
Newspaper Details
Sarasota Journal
Sarasota, Florida, US
Tue, Nov 27, 1979
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 04 Jan 2025
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